New Delhi: A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will decide the question whether trial courts and various High Courts can award two life sentences to an accused for consecutive terms exceeding 14 years.

A three-judge Bench of Justices T.S. Thakur, Rohinton Nariman and Prafulla C. Pant referred the matter to the Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu for posting a batch of appeals from Muthuramalingam and others before a larger Bench of five-judges to determine this important question.

In its reference order the Bench said, “These appeals arise out of a common judgement and order passed by the Madras High Court whereby criminal appeals filed by the appellants against their conviction and sentence of life imprisonment awarded to each one of them have been dismissed.”

The Bench said, “When the appeals came up for hearing before us, Mr K.K. Mani, counsel for the appellants, confined his submissions to the validity of the direction issued by the trial court and affirmed by the High Court that the sentence of imprisonment for life awarded to each one of the appellants for the several murders allegedly committed by them would run concurrently and not consecutively in terms of Section 31 of the CrPC and that the term could not exceed 14 years.” He argued that awarding life terms consecutively would result in the total period of sentence exceeding 14 years, which was not permissible.

The Bench said, “It is evident from these judgements that there is an apparent conflict in the views taken by different Benches of this Court on the question whether consecutive life sentences are legally permissible.”