On Monday, the Supreme Court mandated that the state of Madhya Pradesh compensate a man who had been imprisoned for almost four years and seven months after serving his legal term with ₹25 lakh. The Madhya Pradesh State Legal Services Authority was also instructed by a bench of justices JB Pardiwala and KV Viswanathan to carry out an extensive survey throughout all of the state’s prisons to make sure that no other inmate is still detained after serving their time or receiving bail.
The bench harshly criticized the state for its systematic failure, having previously described the extended detention of rape defendant Sohan Singh as “quite shocking.” The bench stated that such excessive detention is unacceptable and constitutes a serious infringement of fundamental rights.
The court first became aware of the matter earlier this year when Singh filed a plea to end his lengthy incarceration, even though the Madhya Pradesh high court had reduced his life sentence to seven years in 2017. After stating that Singh seems to have served almost eight years more than his allowed term, the top court asked the state to provide an explanation.
Senior lawyer Nachiketa Joshi, the state’s attorney, emphasized on Monday that Singh had been out on bail for a portion of that time and that the additional incarceration totaled almost 4.7 years. Advocate Mahfooz Ahsan Nazki, speaking on Singh’s behalf, affirmed the numbers and demanded responsibility.
The state’s “misleading affidavits” in the case, which had first exaggerated the length of excess detention, were criticized by the court. Singh’s experience dates back twenty years. He was found guilty in July 2005 of rape, house trespass, and criminal intimidation under Sections 376(1), 450, and 506-B of the Indian Penal Code after being tried by a sessions court in Khurai, district Sagar. He was given a life sentence.
However, in October 2017, the Madhya Pradesh high court upheld the conviction and lowered the sentence to the statutory minimum of seven years of rigorous imprisonment after noting flaws in the prosecution’s case, such as the delay in filing the FIR and the lack of supporting medical evidence. Singh was behind bars until June 6, 2025, about eight years after the high court’s judgment and far longer than the maximum sentence he could have legally received, despite the obvious change in his sentence.
The issue only became apparent after he petitioned the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has ordered the Madhya Pradesh government to determine how such a miscarriage of justice was let to occur and to establish accountability, as HT first reported on August 28. “The case’s facts are very startling.
In this respect, we ask the state to provide a suitable explanation. The August 22 order had added, “We give the state two weeks to submit a suitable response to the aforementioned.” It also stated, “We would like to know how such a serious lapse occurred and why the petitioner remained in jail for more than seven years even after undergoing the entire sentence of seven years.”
