Written by Manraj Grewal SharmaChandigarh | December 12, 2025 12:16 AM IST 4 min readThe court found that the Home Department wrongly relied on alleged jail offences going back more than a decade, in violation of the policy. Clause 4(i) says only the last five years of conduct should be considered.The Punjab and Haryana High Court has set aside the Haryana government’s decision rejecting premature release for Sonia Poonia, the prime convict in the 2001 Uklana family murder case, calling the State’s order “patently perverse, illegal and unsustainable in the eyes of law.” The court has ordered a fresh review of her case under the State’s 2002 premature release policy within two months and granted her interim bail in the meantime.The killings took place in August 2001, when Sonia was accused of planning the murders of eight members of her family, including her father, former MLA Relu Ram Punia, her stepmother, siblings, sister-in-law and three minor children at their home in Uklana, Hisar. The prosecution alleged that property disputes and concerns over her son’s future drove the crime. Sonia’s judicial confession and a suicide note were central to the case. A Hisar court sentenced Sonia and her husband, Sanjeev Kumar, to death in 2004. The High Court later commuted the sentence, but the Supreme Court restored it in 2007 before reducing it to life imprisonment in 2014 due to delays in deciding their mercy petitions.In a 25 page order dated December 9 in CRWP 10284 2024, Justice Surya Partap Singh quashed the August 6, 2024 order of the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) rejecting Sonia’s plea. Sonia, convicted on May 27, 2004, had approached the High Court after the State Level Committee cited 17 alleged jail offences and a supposed lack of remorse and recommended that she “shall remain in jail till her last breath.”Justice Singh held that the rejection failed to follow Haryana’s Premature Release Policy dated April 12, 2002, which governs Sonia’s case. Under Clause 2(aa), convicts in serious cases whose death sentence has been commuted to life can be considered for release after serving 20 years of actual imprisonment and 25 years including remission. According to the judgment, Sonia has already completed over 23 years and 10 months of actual custody and more than 28 years and 10 months with remission, placing her beyond the minimum requirement.The court found that the Home Department wrongly relied on alleged jail offences going back more than a decade, in violation of the policy. Clause 4(i) says only the last five years of conduct should be considered. “For the purpose of assessment of a prisoner for premature release, only the conduct of the petitioner in the last five years has to be looked into, but the impugned order shows that the jail offences committed by the petitioner during the period 2005 to 2018, too, have been taken into consideration,” the court observed.Justice Singh also criticised the State Level Committee for going beyond its role by referring to trial stage material, including Sonia’s judicial confession, and by commenting on the gravity of the offence. “The quality of evidence has to be discussed either by the learned trial Court or the Court dealing with appeal. But the State Level Committee is not supposed to look into the quality of evidence,” the judgment said. Its recommendation that Sonia remain in prison “till her last breath” was described as an overreach, with the High Court citing the Constitution Bench ruling in Union of India v V Sriharan (2016) to stress that such conditions can only be imposed by courts.Along with directing a fresh review of Sonia’s case under the April 12, 2002 policy, the court extended the same relief to her husband and co convict, Sanjeev Kumar. Both have been granted interim bail and are expected to be released from Hisar Central Jail after furnishing bonds before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Hisar.Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram© The Indian Express Pvt LtdTags:chandigarhPunjab and Haryana High Court