The NCB special court had also convicted Benson with 15 years rigorous imprisonment. However, the High Court also commuted his sentence to 10 years and a fine. (Representational Image)
It was in January 2012, when a special Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) court awarded death penalty to an Amritsar resident for a “subsequent offence” of drug trafficking. The then special NCB judge Shalini Singh Nagpal awarded capital punishment to Paramjeet Singh. However, a year later, the Punjab and Haryana High Court declined to confirm the capital punishment and commuted it to 15 years rigorous imprisonment and a fine.
The judgment was first of its kind, wherein a capital punishment was awarded under NDPS Act. NCB had invoked Section 31A of NDPS Act, 1985 against Paramjeet Singh after producing his previous case’s conviction record. A Delhi court had earlier convicted Paramjeet in 2003 for possessing 6.12 kg of heroin and had sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment. He was released, on parole, from Tihar jail in 2005. The NCB officials arrested him in Sector 39 of Chandigarh in 2007 when he was delivering 10 kg heroin to Festus Benson Onwuchuruba, a Republic of Burundi national.
The NCB special court had also convicted Benson with 15 years rigorous imprisonment. However, the High Court also commuted his sentence to 10 years and a fine.
The NCB special court, in its judgment awarding capital punishment to Paramjeet, had said that “the legislature has left no option with the court to award any sentence other than death” for the subsequent conviction under NDPS Act.
However, commuting Paramjeet’s death sentence on August 16, 2013, the High Court had then held that “it would be quite unsafe to impose such a sentence of death” under such circumstances, when his appeal against the first conviction was yet pending in Delhi High Court.
“In case the death sentence is executed and thereafter the appeal in the Delhi High court results in acquittal, the process of hanging till death would be irreversible; besides, it would entail other consequences. Even otherwise, the facts and circumstances of the case are not such which would warrant the imposition of death sentence specially when the Delhi HC is seized of the appeal against the judgment of conviction,” the division bench said in the judgment delivered by division bench comprising Justice SS Saron and Justice SP Bangarh on August 16, 2013.
An HC division bench had also taken note of the 2011 Bombay High Court verdict which has held that Section 31A is violative of Article 21 of the Constitution of India as it then provided for a “mandatory death penalty”. Paramjeet, according to his family, is currently serving his sentence in Amritsar jail.