India, July 2 -- The Delhi high court on Tuesday set aside the sentence review board's (SRB's) decision to reject the premature release of Santosh Kumar Singh, serving a life term for the 1996 rape and murder of law student Priyadarshini Mattoo.

The court ruled that the SRB's 2024 decision was passed without proper application of mind or a reasoned assessment of Singh's reformative progress. In a detailed judgment, justice Sanjeev Narula came down hard on the SRB, criticising its vague reliance on an indeterminate "etcetera" while listing the grounds for rejection, and terming its reasoning that prison conduct is no indicator of post-release behaviour "deeply problematic".

The judge held that the SRB's decision suffered from "patent ill...