New Delhi (Friday, May 29) On the same day the Supreme Court laid out mandatory guidelines for high courts to pronounce judgment within three months of reserving the verdict, a bench of the Supreme Court pronounced its verdict in a 42-year-old Delhi double murder case after reserving it for 15 months.In July 1984, two bodies were found within three days of each other in Civil Lines and Alipore, identified as those of a truck driver and a helper. Within a fortnight of the body being found, Delhi Police arrested the suspects and charged them with murdering the driver and helper to steal the truck.The two cases, registered at Civil Lines and Alipore police stations, were tried together in 2008 and the sessions court convicted the accused of murder in 2009 and sentenced them to life imprisonment. His appeals were rejected by the Delhi High Court in 2013. One of the convicts, Gopi Chand alias Pappu, had appealed against the conviction and life imprisonment before the Supreme Court in 2013.A bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Manoj Mishra heard the final arguments in the case on February 27 last year and reserved its verdict.This decision remained pending with Justice Mishra for 15 months.Delivering the verdict on Friday after 15 months of safekeeping, Justice Manoj Mishra said the prosecution had succeeded in establishing that the five men had conspired to first steal the truck on hire and then murder the driver and the helper. “We, therefore, uphold the conviction of the appellant for the offenses for which he has been convicted by the trial court and the High Court,” the bench said.However, it commuted the life sentence to the 18 years of jail term already served by the convict.On April 12, TOI had reported how Justice Mishra had delivered the verdict in the two cases after reserving judgment for 17 and 11 months.In another case, he pronounced the verdict in February this year after reserving it for 14 months.On Friday, a bench led by CJI Surya Kant, while setting a deadline for expeditious declaration of reserved judgments by the HC, had said, “The right to life and personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution is not limited to the speedy conduct of a trial.”