PESHAWAR, Sept 9: A Peshawar High Court’s judgment, regarding remission to an under-trial prisoner, has placed dozens of prisoners in a disadvantaged position.

The high court, in one of its judgments delivered in May, has ruled that a convict, who had been extended benefit of section 382-B of the Criminal Procedure Code, was not entitled to the remission granted during the period he remained an under-trial prisoner.

Previously, the prison authorities in the province allowed remission to the prisoners who were extended benefit of section 382-B of the CrPC — a section under which a period of detention of an under-trial prisoner has to be considered while awarding sentence to him.

The verdict was delivered by a division bench headed by Justice Nasirul Mulk on May 17 in a habeas corpus petition of Akber Khan Marwat, a former additional secretary of Housing and Physical Planning Department, convicted by an accountability court. Following that verdict, the authorities in different prisons have not been extending remission to prisoners for the period when they remained under-trial.

In that case the Advocate-General, NWFP, Barrister Jehanzaib Raheem, had represented the prison authorities and the government, Advocate Farooq Adam, appeared for the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), and Abdul Sattar Khan represented the petitioner.

The petitioner had moved the court on the ground that the remissions extended to him, when he was facing trial, were withdrawn after the President issued directives that remissions should not be extended to prisoners in accountability cases. He claimed that he was extended those remissions before the directives were issued by the president and, when he was an under-trial prisoner.

The bench had observed: “The stage at which the grant of the benefit of section 382-B is to be considered by the court is when it is passing sentence of imprisonment after convicting the accused. The section does not say that the sentence of imprisonment shall commence from the date of arrest of the convict, but only that period of detention already undergone by him, as an under-trial prisoner shall be counted towards his sentence of imprisonment.”

The court added: “The clear wordings of the section does not allow the creation of a legal fiction by which the sentence of imprisonment shall be made to commence from a date prior to its imposition.”

The bench observed that under Rule 206(i) of the Prison Rules, remission should be calculated from the first day of the calendar month next following the date of the prisoner’s sentence. The court also discussed Rule 199 of the Prison Rules and observed that the said two rules clearly indicated that the remission under the Prison Rules could be earned only by a convict, who had been sentenced to imprisonment. The rules do not admit of any remissions to an under-trial prisoner.

The Chairman of Voice of Prisoners, Advocate Noor Alam Khan, told Dawn that usually a simple trial was concluded in more than a two-year period and, for that delay an under-trial prisoner could not be held responsible.

He added that the law should be suitably amended so that a prisoner could be awarded remission for the period when he was facing trial.

He informed that a number of prisoners could not be released from prison as the prison authorities have declined to allow them remission for the period they faced trial.