Court grants probation to two in 2013 stabbing case

New Delhi: A Delhi court has released two men on probation for good conduct, 13 years after they were booked for stabbing a man with a screwdriver, saying that sending them to jail at this belated stage would serve no meaningful purpose.

Additional Sessions Judge Saurabh Partap Singh Laler was hearing appeals filed by Amrish Thakur alias Mirchi and Yogender Lal alias Jhunjhun against a July 2025 magisterial court order that had sentenced them to six months of simple imprisonment under sections 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means) and 341 (wrongful restraint) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

According to the prosecution, Thakur and Lal, along with another co-accused, Rakesh, accosted Deepak on October 19, 2013, and stabbed him with a screwdriver in the neck and shoulders. They also hit him on the head with a stone. The court said, “Section 4 of the Probation of Offenders Act, 1958, empowers a court, where a person is found guilty of an offence not punishable with death or imprisonment for life, to release such offender on probation of good conduct, having regard to the circumstances of the case, including the nature of the offence and the character of the offender, instead of sentencing him at once to imprisonment.”

It said the underlying philosophy of the Act is unambiguously reformative rather than retributive, the object being to prevent the conversion of first-time and youthful offenders into hardened criminals through unnecessary incarceration.