Delhi High Court Questions SRB Over Mattoo Case Arbitrary Decision

The Delhi High Court has raised serious concerns over the functioning of the Sentencing Review Board (SRB) while hearing a plea for premature release filed by Santosh Kumar Singh in the high-profile Priyadarshini Mattoo case. The court criticised the board’s November 2025 decision rejecting Singh’s request, observing that the reasoning appeared to rely more on public perception than on objective legal standards. Justice Anup J. Bhambhani remarked that the board seemed to be acting like a “blindfolded Lady Justice", but not in the intended sense of impartiality, instead implying a lack of proper judicial reasoning.

The SRB had earlier cited a police report describing the crime as heinous and expressed concerns that Singh’s release could disturb public peace and tranquillity. However, the court indicated that such reasoning alone was insufficient to deny premature release, especially if it lacked a comprehensive evaluation of legal criteria. This marks the second time the matter has come under judicial scrutiny, after the High Court had set aside a previous rejection in July 2025 and directed the board to reconsider the case afresh.

The case traces back to 1996, when Priyadarshini Mattoo, a law student at Delhi University, was raped and murdered. Singh, her senior, was initially acquitted by a trial court in 1999 due to lack of evidence, despite strong observations regarding his guilt. In 2006, the Delhi High Court overturned the acquittal and awarded him the death penalty, a decision later modified by the Supreme Court of India in 2010, which commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

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The ongoing proceedings have brought renewed attention to the concept of premature release, which allows life convicts to seek early release based on factors such as conduct in prison, rehabilitation, and time served. The High Court’s observations underline the need for such decisions to be guided by consistent legal principles rather than subjective considerations, as it continues to examine whether the board’s latest rejection meets the required standards of fairness and due process.

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