New Delhi: Delhi High Court examines Sentence Review Board’s decision to refuse premature release Santosh Kumar SinghPriyadarshini Mattoo, serving a life sentence in the 1996 rape and murder case, observed that the board’s decisions seem to be influenced by public perception.Justice Anup J Bhambhani on Thursday said that while there was no doubt that the crime was heinous and caused “permanent harm” to the family of the deceased, “the SRB is preying on public perception”.“You are an extremely unpopular person… Your name does not look good so I (SRB) am rejecting it,” the judge said, marking a trend detected by the HC in several petitions before it arising from the board’s rejection of premature release. The court said, “There is something called reformation… 30 years in custody.”It listed Singh’s petition on April 20 along with other similar petitions on the same issue. The court told Singh’s lawyer, “You will be treated fairly. You will be treated according to what I distill.”The High Court had last month directed convict Singh to surrender as the victim’s brother Hemant Mattoo had strongly opposed his plea seeking premature release. The court had then indicated that it would consider Singh’s pardon plea only if he surrenders, which would lead to termination of his parole.In July last year, a separate HC bench had set aside the board’s decision to reject Singh’s condonation plea, observing that he had shown signs of improvement and asked it to take a fresh decision. It had faulted the Board for relying only on the gravity, cruelty and depravity of the crime and the objections raised by the Delhi Police and the CBI.During Thursday’s hearing, senior lawyer Mohit Mathur sought early hearing of the mercy petition and argued that Singh had already spent 31 years in custody. He said that despite the comprehensive HC verdict last year, the board again rejected his case on the same grounds.Justice Bhambhani pointed out that there were many “worse cases”, including a convict spending 41 years in custody because the board was “just dismissing things” due to the heinousness of the crime despite receiving recommendations to the contrary.In his main petition, Singh challenged the board’s decision dated November 27, 2025, which had rejected his case for premature release after the HC referred the matter back to the board last year.While Hemant Mattoo’s lawyer opposed the plea to extend the hearing date, arguing that the convict had committed a serious crime, the HC replied that Singh was punished for the same.“There’s something called reform. There’s something called a custodial sentence of 30 years.” There is something called transfer in an open jail,” the court said.“I understand your feelings. What he did was unacceptable and the system punished him. He got life. The crime was heinous. What do we do? We imprison a man like this?” Justice Bhambhani expressed surprise and highlighted that Sushil Kumar, convicted in the 1995 Tandoor murder case, had also been released after serving 23 years in jail.Singh’s lawyer cited the example of the 1999 Jessica Lal murder convict, who was later released.Mattu, 25, was raped and murdered in January 1996. Singh, a Delhi University law student, was acquitted by the trial court in the case on December 3, 1999, but the Delhi HC overturned the verdict on October 27, 2006, convicting him of rape and murder and sentencing him to death.Singh, son of a former IPS officer, had challenged his conviction and death sentence in the High Court. In October 2010, the Supreme Court upheld Singh’s conviction but commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.