Report No. 39

9. Transportation-how carried out.-

Apart from section 58 of the Indian Penal Code to which reference has already been made, there was no indication either in that Code or in the Code of Criminal Procedure as to how a sentence of transportation was to be carried out and what exactly it involved. There is, however, no doubt that when the Indian Penal Code was enacted, transportation meant transportation beyond the seas to the penal settlement in the Andaman Islands, and transportation for life meant transportation for the remaining period of the convicted person's natural life. Subsequently, with changing notions of penology, treatment of prisoners and management of penal establishments, the sentence of transportation ceased necessarily to involve convicts being sent oversease or even outside the Provinces wherein they were convicted.