HC grants one month parole to Priyadarshini Mattoo`s killer

Delhi High Court granted 1 month parole to Santosh Kumar Singh, undergoing life sentence in Priyadarshini Mattoo rape and murder case, so that he can submit his dissertation for three-year LLM course.

New Delhi: Delhi High Court on Monday granted one month parole to Santosh Kumar Singh, undergoing life sentence in the Priyadarshini Mattoo rape and murder case, so that he can submit his dissertation that is required under his three-year LLM course. Justice Mukta Gupta refused to grant parole for three months as sought by Singh, saying as per Annamalai University, from where he is doing the course under its distance education programme, two weeks to one month time is sufficient to submit the dissertation.

The court said he will be granted parole on submitting a personal bond of Rs 25,000 before the court concerned. Singh, who is in the third-year of the course, had sought three months` parole, saying he needs to identify a supervisor before writing his dissertation and also attend personal contact programmes on March 7 and 8. The court, however, refused saying, "It can`t be three months. Of course not." The high court had granted him parole in May last year for 13 days for writing his second-year exams. He had been granted parole in 2012 for his first year exams. Singh, a law student in Delhi University, had raped and murdered Mattoo, a third-year law student, in January 1996. He was acquitted by the trial court on December 3, 1999, but the Delhi High Court had on October 27, 2006 reversed that decision, holding him guilty of rape and murder. The high court had also awarded death penalty to him in the case. Singh, son of a former senior IPS officer, had challenged his conviction and death sentence awarded by the high court. In October 2010, the Supreme Court had upheld Singh`s conviction but reduced the death sentence to life imprisonment.