- (1.) The present writ petition has been filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India for grant of agricultural parole to the petitioner. It is pleaded in the writ petition that the petitioner was arrested in case arising out of FIR No. 365 dated 18.11.1991, registered at Police Station Ghanaur, District Sonepat, under Sections 304 Part-II, 323 and 325 IPC. He was convicted and sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of seven years. The appeal, filed by the petitioner, has already been decided. It is further averred that father of the petitioner had about 19 acres of agricultural land, out of which 4 acres has fallen to his share and there is no male member in his family to look after the same.
(2.) Jai Kishan Chhillar, Superintendent, District Jail, Sonepat, has filed reply on behalf of the respondents, wherein it is stated that the Senior Superintendent of Police, Sonepat, has not recommended parole case of the petitioner on the ground that there might be danger to the public peace and security of the State and that land of the petitioner has been looked after by his wife Santro, daughter Renu aged 16/17 years and son Monu aged 14 years.
(3.) It is apparent that son of the petitioner is minor. This Court, on a number of times, has considered as to whether denial of parole, on the ground that it may cause danger to the public peace and security of the State, is a valid ground or not. No material has been placed on record to show as to how grant of parole to the petitioner shall be a danger to the public peace and security of the State. In a celebrated judgment, rendered by Hon'ble the Apex Court in Joginder Singh v. State of Punjab, 1988 2 RCR(Cri) 548, what is security to the State and danger to the public peace was considered and His Lordship held as under:- "7. A key to the scheme of the Act is provided by Section 6. where satisfaction of the State Government or the releasing authority is expressly limited to endangering security of the State and maintenance of public order. The expression, "Security of State" and "Public Order" occur in Article 19(2) of the Constitution. These expressions have been the subject-matter of Judicial Consideration and they have acquired a precise meaning. Thus, security of the State is endangered by crimes of violence, intended to overthrow the Government, waging of war and rebellion against the government, external aggression or war, but not by minor breaches of public peace or tranquillity, such as unlawful assembly, riot, affray, rash driving, promoting enmity between classes and the like Ramesh Thappar v. State of Madras, 1950 SCR 594. The concept of' public order' must be distinguished from the popular concept of 'law and order' and of 'security of the State'. They refer to three 'concentric circles'. Law and order represents the largest circle, within which is the next circle representing public order and the smallest circle represents security of the State Ram Manohar v. State of Bihar, 1966 1 SCR 709. Hence, an activity which affects 'law and order' may not necessarily effect public order and an activity which may be prejudicial to public order may not necessarily endanger security of the State. The twin grounds of endangering security of State and public order may or may not be exhaustive of the grounds for refusing temporary release, but these grounds go a long way to suggest that grounds for refusal must be these and like grounds. The apprehension that the prisoner may indulge in violence especially directed towards the members of the opposite party or the witnesses on whose testimony he was sentenced to imprisonment, does not broadly speaking justify refusal of the benefit of release envisaged under the Act. This conclusion is justified because the Act and the Rules framed thereunder contain a larger number of in built safeguards. To mention a few of such safeguards, the temporary release is subject to such conditions as may be imposed before the release. The release is for a limited period of 4 to 6 weeks under Sections 3 and 3 weeks during the first year and 2 weeks during each successive year under Section 4. The temporary release under Section 4 is available only to prisoners, who have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment of not less than 5 years. A condition precedent under Section 4 is that the prisoner must have earned at least three annual good conduct remissions. An habitual offender, as defined in Clause (3) of Section 2 of the Punjab Habitual Offenders (Control and Reform) Act, 1952, or a person convicted of robbery or dacoity or such other offences as the State Government may by notification specify is not entitled to be released Under Sub-section (2) of Section 8 of the Act, if a prisoner fails to surrender himself within a period of 10 days from the date on which he should have surrendered he is liable to be arrested by the police without a warrant in order to undergo the unexpired portion of the sentence. If he surrenders within the said period of 10 days before the Superintendent of Jail, the prisoner is liable to be awarded any of the jail sentence mentioned in Clauses (a) to (e) of Subsection (2) of Section 8. Section 9 makes it an offence for the prisoner if he fails to surrender within the time aforesaid and he is liable to sentence up to 2 years' imprisonment. Elaborate provisions have been made for constant watch on the prisoner by the local police at the place or places where the prisoner spends his period of parole or furlough. If the prisoner while on parole or furlough, commits any offence, his release order is liable to be cancelled forthwith. These provisions have been intended to provide adequate safeguards to ensure that the released prisoner surrenders to the jail custody to undergo the remaining sentence, besides ensuring that during his release, he commits no offence. The aim of a sentence of imprisonment especially a long term imprisonment is to reform the prisoner besides being a deterrent to him as well as others. The aim is not to make him more hardened, more brutal, more cunning and dangerous to society. (See Rakesh Kaushik v. B. L. Vig. Superintendent, Central Jail, New Delhi ). Prisoner or detenu is not stripped of his fundamental or other legal rights, save those which are inconsistent with his incarceration, and if any of those rights is violated, the Court which is to use the words of Krishna Iyer, J. (as his Lordship then was) "not a distant abstraction omnipotent in the books but an activist institution which is the cynosure of public hope" will immediately spring into action and run to his rescue. Francis Coralie Mullin v. Administration of Union Territory of Delhi and Others, 1981 AIR(SC) 746. One of these rights is of personal liberty. Personal liberty would include the right to socialise with members of the family and friends, subject, of course, to any valid prison regulations and under Articles 14 and 21, such prison regulations must be reasonable and non-arbitrary. If any prison regulation or procedure laid down by it regulating the right to have interviews with members of the family and friends is arbitrary or unreasonable, it would be liable to be struck down as invalid as being violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. (Francis Coralie Mullia supra). A long period of incarceration where a person is cut off from the establishing influence of the family tends to brutalise the prisoner and blunt his finer sensibilities so that the end product may perhaps be more criminal than the one at the point of entry in the jail. The aforesaid observations made by the highest Court of the country apply with equal force to the case under consideration. This then is the philosophy underlying the Act.";