CHENNAI: In the absence of any statute or administrative rule or regulation, granting temporary release on parole should be treated only as temporary suspension of sentence and the same shall not be deducted from the sentence period, the Madras High Court has ruled. A full bench comprising Justices K N Basha, T Sudanthiram and S Nagamuthu gave the ruling on September 14 while answering a question of law referred to it for a decision. Yesu alias Velaiyan was a life convict in the Central Prison in Palayamkottai. He was granted parole for a total period of 480 days. As the prison authorities did not count the period spent on parole as the period of sentence spent by him, he filed a writ petition for a direction to include the parole period as part of sentence period. A single judge allowed the petition. Aggrieved, the State preferred an appeal. As there were similar matters, the issue was referred to the full bench for deciding the issue. After going through the entire materials, the bench observed that in the state of Tamil Nadu, neither the government nor any other statutory authority had power to grant parole for want of rules or a statute. The authorities, under the TN Suspension of Sentence Rules, had the power only to grant suspension of sentence and not parole. Until a legislation was made or appropriate rules were framed by the government regulating the grant of parole (temporary release), there should be no temporary release of any prisoner on parole at all. The releases so far made were not under parole and they were only under (temporary) suspension of sentence. Outside the scope of the rules, no authority had got any power to grant suspension of sentence in any form. Until such a statute or administrative rule or regulation was made, neither the government nor any other authority should grant temporary release of prisoners on parole, the bench said.
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