Life Terms Cannot Run Consecutively, Must Overlap

The Supreme Court has held that two life terms imposed in a single trial cannot be directed to run as consecutive sentences and must instead run concurrently, while partly allowing the criminal appeal filed by Raju Shantaram Koli against the State of Maharashtra. The Bench of Justice K.V. Viswanathan and Justice Arun Palli set aside the direction of the Thane trial court, affirmed by the Bombay High Court, that the life sentences for murder and for rape were to be undergone one after the other. The Court ordered that the sentences will overlap, but said remission granted in one case will not wipe out the other, and left the conviction undisturbed.

Criminal Appeal No. 5073 of 2026, Raju Shantaram Koli v. State of Maharashtra, was partly allowed to that limited extent. The Bench did not touch the findings of guilt. The appellant will continue to serve life imprisonment for both offences, but at the same time and not in succession.

According to the prosecution, the case arose from the rape and murder of a 12-year-old on April 29, 2010. The appellant was arrested on April 30, 2010. Advocate M Y Deshmukh appeared for the appellant before the Supreme Court. Advocate Bharat Bagla appeared for the State of Maharashtra. Conviction was recorded under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code for murder and under Section 376 read with Section 342 of the Indian Penal Code for rape read with wrongful confinement.

Thane Case Reaches Apex Court

At Thane, the trial court convicted the appellant on both sets of charges and imposed life imprisonment on each count. It then directed that the second life term would start only after the first had been fully undergone, including any remission needed to bring the first term to an end.

Bombay High Court upheld the conviction and kept that direction on sentences intact. The findings on the arrest, the offences of April 29, 2010, and the punishment of life imprisonment for each offence thus came to the Supreme Court when the appellant filed the present appeal. The State defended the conviction and the sentences as imposed and affirmed.

In the Supreme Court, guilt was no longer the issue. The dispute was how the two life terms were to be served. The appellant challenged the stacking of one life term upon another. The State opposed any cut in punishment and asked for the trial court and High Court orders to continue.

The Bench looked at what life imprisonment means and at the power of a trial court in a single trial to say whether sentences run together or one after another. It held two life sentences cannot be made consecutive in this way. The two terms must be superimposed. Time spent in prison counts toward both at once, instead of being counted first for one and then afresh for the second.

On jail arithmetic, the difference is practical. When sentences run concurrently, the prisoner serves them together. When a court orders them to run consecutively, the prisoner finishes the first sentence, with all its legal effects, and only then starts the second. Many readers come to this distinction after typing life imprisonment India into a search bar. In fixed-term cases courts often have a choice. For life terms, the Court restated that stacking is not allowed.

Why Court Barred consecutive sentences

A life term is not a fixed number of years that ends on a calendar date without state action. It runs till the end of the natural life of the convict, subject to remission, commutation and the powers of the appropriate government under the Code of Criminal Procedure and the remission rules. If one life term were to follow another, the second could never begin in any real sense until the first had ended by death or by a formal remission order.

Stacking of that kind, the Court said, would be unworkable and against the scheme of sentencing. The normal course where connected offences are tried together is concurrent running, unless there are clear reasons and legal sanction for a different order. Even where a court has discretion to make shorter fixed terms consecutive, that logic does not stretch to two life terms.

The same confusion prompts the query life imprisonment how many years in India once remission is mentioned. Under prison rules and remission policies in different states, a life term is often taken up for premature release after 14 years, or after longer periods fixed by policy or court order, but in law the sentence itself lasts for the remainder of life unless remitted. The Supreme Court fixed no number of years here. It did not change the length of either term. It ruled only on whether the two run together or one after the other.

Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code provides death or life imprisonment with fine for murder. Section 376 provided, at the relevant time, a minimum term with the possibility of life imprisonment depending on the form of the offence and the law as it stood. Section 342, for wrongful confinement, was invoked alongside the rape charge in the framing of the sentence. The trial court treated murder and the sexual offence as distinct offences calling for separate life terms, and that part was not disturbed.

In effect, the appeal became about execution of sentences. Both life terms stay alive. Only the consecutive element goes. The appellant remains convicted for murder under Section 302 and for the offence under Section 376 read with Section 342, and remains sentenced to life on each count. What changes is the counting. The two terms will now be counted as running together from the date they are deemed to have started under the warrants and jail records.

Remission To Be Considered Separately

The order adds a safeguard with concurrent running. Remission granted in one life term does not by itself end the other. Each sentence keeps its own legal identity even while served at the same time. Jail authorities and the remission board will have to apply the rules to each sentence on its own terms.

In practice, an order granting remission or premature release on the life term for murder would not end the life term for rape. A separate decision would be needed for the second term under the remission policy, the facts of that offence, conduct in prison, and any conditions set by the sentencing court or the High Court. The reverse applies in the same way. Release needs clearance under both sentences.

Concurrent sentences are at times misread as merging into one. The order says they do not merge here. They overlap in time but remain two punishments for two offences. The victim was a 12-year-old child, and murder and rape were treated as grave and independent wrongs. That finding was not diluted. The full weight of both punishments stays, with only the method of serving them corrected.

Jail records will now have to show concurrent running. Time already served will be credited to both terms under the rules. Any future remission proposal will go before the competent authority separately for each life term. The State of Maharashtra, through its prison department and home department, will maintain the records under the Supreme Court order and the warrants as modified.