LAHORE, July 21: A full bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday held that remission in prison terms was available only to convicts and they did not extend to under-trial prisoners. Comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Shakirullah Jan and Justice Syed Tasaddaq Husain Jilani, the bench observed that under-trial prisoners were, however, entitled to the period an accused was under trial to be counted as part of the term as stipulated under Section 382 b of the Criminal Procedure Code.

The court received a petition from Amanullah, sentenced in a murder case, through the Dera Ghazi Khan jail superintendent.

He contended that successive remissions announced by the government were not applied on his term. The convict stated that his capital punishment was commuted to 25-year imprisonment on an appeal in the Lahore High Court. Later, his term was commuted when the government announced a five-year remission to all prisoners on the occasion of the golden jubilee of Pakistan.

The Supreme Court observed that the remission was applied on the petitioner’s sentence because he was then a convict. The court dismissed the petition accordingly.

Additional advocate-general Mohammad Hanif Khatana opposed the petition citing the judgments of the superior courts contained in PLD 2005 SC 163, PLD 1991 FSC 236, PLJ 2000 Quetta 8 and PLJ 2004 Quetta 1 to substantiate his argument that government remissions were not available to under-trial prisoners.

He submitted that Amanullah could not be released before Sept 27, 2016.