SRINAGAR: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has brought to a close a criminal case that began with a village quarrel in 1979 and travelled through the justice system for more than four decades, observing that no useful purpose would now be served by sending a seventy-year-old woman back to prison.
In a judgment pronounced on December 29, 2025, Justice Sanjay Parihar treated the sentence of Shameema Begum as already undergone, while enhancing the fine, explicitly recording the extraordinary delay at every stage of the proceedings.
The case traces its origins to July 10, 1979, when an altercation broke out in Bijhama village, Uri, over irrigating maize fields. During the quarrel, the appellant struck her mother-in-law with an axe, and when the deceased, her husband’s grandmother, intervened, she too was hit. The elderly woman sustained a head injury and died four days later, on July 20, 1979. An FIR was initially registered under Sections 326 and 324 of the Ranbir Penal Code, and after the death, the offence under Section 326 was converted to Section 302.
What followed was a trial that extended over three decades. By the time the Sessions Court delivered its judgment on July 16, 2009, the appellant was convicted not for murder but for culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304-II RPC, and for causing hurt under Section 324 RPC. She was sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 2,000 for the former, and one year’s imprisonment for the latter. The appellant was taken into custody upon conviction but was granted bail by the High Court within days.
The appeal itself then remained pending for another sixteen years. When it finally came up for hearing, the defence did not challenge the conviction on merits but pressed for leniency in sentence, arguing that the prolonged pendency had violated the appellant’s right to a speedy trial and appeal under Article 21 of the Constitution. The court was informed that the appellant was now over seventy, suffering from serious weakness of eyesight, living in a far-flung area of Uri, and belonged to a modest socio-economic background. There was no representation on behalf of the State, and it was noted that the prosecution had never appealed either against her acquittal under Section 302 or against the adequacy of the sentence awarded in 2009.
In its analysis, the High Court placed reliance on Supreme Court precedents emphasising that the right to a speedy trial extends to appellate proceedings, and that sentencing must balance deterrence with reform and rehabilitation. The judgment also recalled that modern penology places rehabilitation, rather than retribution, at the centre of sentencing policy, particularly where long delays have kept an accused entangled in the criminal justice system for decades.
Applying those principles to the facts, the court noted that the incident was not premeditated but occurred in the heat of the moment, that there was no medical evidence of a depressed skull fracture, and that even the trial court had taken into account the appellant’s status as a woman who had endured a prolonged trial. Justice Parihar observed that while delay by itself cannot ordinarily enure to the benefit of a convict, courts cannot remain oblivious to situations where criminal proceedings span generations.
Considering that the appellant had faced the ordeal of investigation, trial and appeal for over 46 years, had already undergone periods of incarceration, and was now advanced in age with infirmities, the court held that maintaining the substantive sentence would serve no meaningful purpose. As Section 304-II RPC prescribes no minimum sentence, the High Court treated the sentence as already undergone and enhanced the fine to Rs 5,000, with a default simple imprisonment of three months.
With that, the appeal was disposed of, formally closing a case that began in 1979 and reached its legal end in 2025, a judgment that the court itself described as bearing testimony to systemic delay in the disposal of criminal cases.
