Karnataka HC rejects plea for concurrent sentences in murder and witness-threat cases

The High Court of Karnataka has dismissed a petition filed by a 29-year-old convict seeking to have his sentences in two separate cases, one for murder and another for threatening a witness in the murder case, run concurrently instead of consecutively.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed an order rejecting the plea of Ramesh from Bengaluru, who is currently undergoing imprisonment. The petitioner had sought directions under Section 427 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to the jail authorities to ensure that his two sentences ran concurrently.

Ramesh was initially arrested in 2016 in the murder case, and in 2019 he was booked for threatening a witness in that case when the trial in the murder case was pending.

On August 19, 2022, he was first convicted in the witness-threat case and sentenced to five years of simple imprisonment. Subsequently, on January 6, 2023, he was convicted in the murder case and sentenced to life imprisonment.

It was argued on his behalf that both sentences should run concurrently as the witness-threat case was an offshoot of the murder case and the two cases were tried within a five-month window.

Refusing to accept the petitioner’s contentions, the High Court said that the second crime was registered three years after the first and arose from a different cause of action, and was tried separately, though linked to the pending murder case against him.