The Delhi high court’s order to release Sushil ‘Tandoor’ Sharma is to be welcomed for many reasons. It brings glad tidings to hundreds of convicts who have spent two decades or more in jail in Delhi alone. The decision did not come easy – Sharma had to fight for many years and for every inch of the way to secure his release. He had already spent nearly 28 years in jail and he went to the high court after the due process kept failing him. In fact, last week itself, the court had made clear its intentions by questioning the functioning of the state Sentence Review Board (SRB), which decides on the early release of prisoners committed to Life Sentences. The high court had asked the Delhi government to explain why Sharma should not be released when even the SRB had ruled out the possibility of Sharma ever committing a similar offence. The court observed,“He is incarcerated for over 25 years including remission. He has already served the sentence. Does it not infringe upon his human rights, which are inalienable rights…The Sentence Review Board (SRB) cannot say no, no this murder was brutal, so we will not release him. If we allow the executive to keep a person in jail indefinitely, where do we draw the line? Then nobody will be released ever for committing a murder.”In India we do not have a governor’s pardon system of remission. The president sometimes commutes death sentences and state governors release prisoners serving a life sentence prematurely, after the recommendation of the respective SRB. In normal circumstances, a life sentence means that a convict can hope to apply for remission after a certain number of years have passed. Once he or she has done a minimum of 18 to 20 years, a prisoner’s name is sent to the SRB, which meets once or twice a year and, depending on the inmate’s conduct, decides to remit sentences of life and award an early release. Also read: The ‘Terrorists’ of Tihar: The Humanity of the Condemned and DamnedMost ‘lifers’ spend their lives waiting for the holy day when their names may be sent to the board. That is how they measure time: my name should go the board next year, or the year after, or the next time. Of the hundreds or thousands of ‘lifers’ in a state, only a handful are chosen each time the board meets, which it does very sparingly, no more than two or three times a year, since long serving convicts are nobody’s priority. A lifer does not know why his or her name is not sent to the board and if rejected, has no way of knowing why and on what grounds it was rejected. Sharma’s name had been sent to the SRB on numerous occasions but each time it had been rejected, without any explanation. This, despite the fact that in Delhi, the existing guidelines on premature release state that life convicts sentenced for a single offence are to be released after completion of 20 years of incarceration and those who had committed heinous crimes are to be granted the relief after 25 years. Over the last few years, a few other notorious cases have become habitual rejectees of the remission board. They include the convicts of the Jessica Lal murder case (1999) and of the Priyardarshini Matoo murder case (1996). The SRB, chaired by Delhi home minister Satyendar Jain, had its last meeting this October. Of over a hundred names put forward, it rejected as many as 86, including the three above. Sharma’s name had been presented to the SRB in its last meeting too, on June 24, when the board deferred a decision for the next hearing. In its final order the court said the SRB’s rejection of Sharma’s application ‘suffers from arbitrariness and illegality.’Sharma was lucky enough to have resources and a lawyer who took up his case. For thousands of ordinary prisoners, especially those who have spent years or even decades inside, there is usually no family or legal support that can help plead their case. In Tihar, I met a school teacher called Abdul Wahid, who was 74 years old, spoke perfect English and had run a brilliant adult education program in Jail no 8 for years before his old morale was battered. He and his two sons had been inside for nearly 14 years in a case of dowry death, which he claimed was false. He did not know when his name would be sent to the board, why it would not be sent and why the board may reject his name. He had nobody to represent him of course. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such people in Delhi alone. It so happens that as an inmate, I had some interaction will Sharma when working on the Tihar Kala Abhiyan, the Tihar festival of the arts which showcased the jail’s talent to the city in 2017, and also while I was making a documentary on Tihar, again as an inmate. I found Sharma to be a very sincere and, surprisingly, even an enthusiastic participant in the reforms the then DG Sudhir Yadav was trying to bring in. He was a contemporary of such political stalwarts as Arun Jaitley, Abhishek Singhvi and Vijay Goel and was a rising political star when he cut his own career short by killing his wife in 1995. As Oscar Wilde put it, ‘the man had killed the thing he loved and so he had to die.’ Keep a man in prison for decades and you can break him and a broken man is by definition a ‘reformed’ man, and ‘how else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in!’I found that the notoriety of most ‘dreaded criminals’, even those convicted for heinous offences, far exceeds their present, reduced states of being. I could go further and say they are fine men many of them, perhaps finer than many who are outside. They provide a lot of help and counsel to prisoners far more destitute than them, they help to run the jail more smoothly, they have more compassion and forgiveness than many of us. Many of them, including the three I mentioned above, are in a semi-open jail and frequently go home on parole and furlough. They have been doing this for years. Clearly, they are no threat to society. Just treatment to criminals rests on the four Rs: Restraint, Retribution, Reform and Rehabilitation. It can be argued that in the case of prisoners who have been inside for 20 or more years, all the four Rs have been fulfilled, and if they are not still, then they would never be. Then why, as the high court asked, “should we keep him in jail indefinitely?”Also read: SC Pulls Up Centre Over Chandra Brothers Getting Special Treatment in Tihar JailThe answer is fear of the public outrage, which shall be fuelled by a media happy to demonise. The Delhi government shies away from releasing such prisoners because it will bring bad press to it. Thus, we keep them in jail indefinitely in order to satisfy the society’s collective lust for punishment. In our present state of discontent, prison appears to be the only solution for an individual transgression or for social dysfunctionality. Certainly, crime, negligence, corruption, all deserve just treatment and some recompense to society. Retribution is just one aspect of a just treatment and even retribution need not necessarily translate into indefinite and meaningless decades of incarceration which bring no productive value to society. How about providing reparations to your victims or performing other, public, acts of repentance like providing kar seva in a gurudwara? Long incarceration only results in ‘some growing mad and all growing bad,’ because, the inmate can only claim this,I know not whether laws be right or whether laws be wrongAll we know who lie in jail is that the walls are strongAnd that everyday is like a year, a year whose days are longWe assume that exemplary punishment will prevent future atrocities but clearly the deterrent value of prisons is not substantial otherwise the country would not see newer and higher levels of brutality with each passing year, as witnessed in everyday instance of road rage in Delhi alone. Public confession, public censure and public opprobrium may ensure greater deterrence than fear of jail. Otherwise, merely incarcerating or hanging a few will bring neither justice nor closure, nor repentance, for the victims or the perpetrators alike.Mahmood Farooqui is a theatre-personality and writer, well-known for reviving Dastangoi.