HC rejects plea to run murder, witness threat sentences concurrently

Bengaluru: The High Court has dismissed a petition filed by a convict seeking a direction to serve the prison terms imposed in two separate criminal cases concurrently. The petitioner, Ramesh, had been sentenced in a murder case and a separate case involving threats to a witness.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna, presiding over a single-judge Bench, rejected the plea after referring to various Supreme Court rulings. The court observed that when two separate offences are registered under different crime numbers, investigated and tried independently, and result in separate judgments, there is no provision to direct that the sentences must run concurrently.

The Bench also noted that the two offences had occurred at different points in time and arose from different circumstances. Therefore, the petitioner was not entitled to an order allowing him to undergo the sentences simultaneously. According to the case details, a murder and attempt-to-murder case was registered against Ramesh, who falls under the jurisdiction of the K.P. Agrahara police station, in 2016. While the trial in that case was pending, another case was registered against him in 2019 for allegedly threatening a witness. In the witness intimidation case, the trial court sentenced him to five years of simple imprisonment on August 19, 2022. Subsequently, on January 6, 2023, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and an additional five years of rigorous imprisonment in the murder case. Appearing for Ramesh, his counsel argued that the sentences imposed in the two cases, amounting to a total of 10 years and four months apart from the life sentence, were being calculated separately. The lawyer sought a direction to prison authorities under Section 427 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) to allow the sentences to run concurrently.

The defence contended that the witness intimidation case was an offshoot of the original murder case and, therefore, the sentences should be served together. However, the prosecution opposed the plea, arguing that the two offences were distinct and separated by a gap of time. It submitted that they could not be treated as a single transaction and urged the court to dismiss the petition. Accepting the prosecution’s position, the High Court held that the circumstances did not justify concurrent sentences and dismissed the petition.

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