Impasse ends over judge to decide Kashmiri separatist Andrabi’s sentence

NEw new delhi: The sound impasse o'er who should condemn Kashmiri separationist leader Aasiya Andrabi and her two associates has finally been resolved, with a Delhi court on Monday sending the case back to the judge who delivered the conviction for hearing arguments on punishment.Special judge (NIA) Prashant Sharma of Patiala House Courts directed that the matter be placed before his predecessor, Chanderjit Singh, now posted as a district judge (family courts) at Karkardooma, holding that legal precedent barred him from hearing arguments on sentence in the case.The order brings closure to an unusual procedural deadlock that emerged barely a week after the January 14 conviction of Andrabi –– founder of the banned women’s separatist outfit Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM) –– and her associates Sofi Fehmeeda and Nahida Nasreen under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).HT reported on January 21 how the case had slipped into a legal limbo, not over its merits, but over which judge was legally competent to decide the sentence. The uncertainty surfaced on January 16, when the matter came up before judge Sharma, who had recently taken charge as an NIA judge at Patiala House Courts, while Singh, who had heard the trial and delivered the conviction, had been transferred out of the special court. Sharma then flagged the issue of jurisdiction and granted time to NIA prosecutors to address who should hear the sentencing arguments.In his order on Monday, Sharma held that since his court had never been seized of the trial, defence evidence or final arguments, it would not be legally appropriate for him to decide the question of sentence. He noted that Singh was fully conversant with the facts of the case, having examined the evidence “threadbare” and authored the judgment of conviction. Both the NIA and the defence, represented by senior advocate Satish Tamta, agreed that the predecessor judge should hear arguments on sentence, in line with settled law.Sharma relied on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Rama Narang vs Ramesh Narang (1995), which held that conviction and sentence are consequential and inseparable parts of a judgment. “A judgment cannot be said to be complete unless the punishment to which the accused is sentenced is set out therein,” the court observed, adding that even an appeal against conviction under the CrPC lies against the entire judgment, including the sentence.The matter has now been listed for arguments on sentence before Singh at Karkardooma Courts on February 11.