Covid is there outside too, HC says while adjourning '84 Sikh riots convict's plea

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday adjourned the hearing in a plea seeking interim suspension of the sentence of a man convicted in a case related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The court asked the petitioner to approach a trial court in the meantime and posted the matter for July 5, observing that he might just be better off in jail.

Naresh Sehrawat, the convict in the case, had filed the plea praying for a two-week suspension of his sentence, which was handed down to him two years ago. The current plea came up for hearing before a bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Asha Menon.

The high court has earlier also suspended Sehrawat's sentence in 2019 when it had observed that he is "a Chronic Kidney Disease, Stage-IV patient and is admitted in the medicine ward of the Central Jail hospital and is highly vulnerable to a contagious disease like COVID-19."

This time, Sehrawat was arguing for suspension of sentence citing that he fell in the categorisation set down by the High Powered Committee to decongest prisons.

The court observed that Sehrawat had not spent even one year of his sentence in jail and that even if it were to grant the interim suspension, nothing much would be possible in that time. "It's not that he will recover suddenly," Justice Chawla said during the hearing.

"Covid is equally there outside and equally there inside. You are better off inside". You are better off inside".