Supreme Court Slams Madhya Pradesh HC For Granting Bail To Murder Convicts On Condition Of Planting Saplings

‘Justice is sometimes a farce,’ goes a well-worn axiom. This can now be expanded to include justice as an ecological farce, which would have found its place in the history of India’s jurisprudence had the Supreme Court not stepped in earlier this week.

The SC bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria expressed shock and set aside the order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court of April 29, which suspended the life imprisonment sentence and granted bail to two convicts guilty of murder on the condition that the duo plant ten saplings each.

The life imprisonment sentence had been read out by the trial court earlier when the two were found guilty under Sections 302 (murder) and 341 (wrongful restraint) of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code. “…the judges say you do the plantation. What is this?” demanded an annoyed Justice Kumar in the SC.

The MP HC Justices Anand Pathak and Hirdesh, in their judicial wisdom, gave new meaning to the term ‘getting away with murder’. Planting ten saplings to get away with murder, not more or less, not a hundred or five hundred, which might still constitute a degree of hardship if not punishment, must rank as a new branch of reformative-ecological justice.

What is this if not an utter farce in every way, a travesty of justice for the victims, and a mockery of the criminal investigation and judicial process itself? It is unthinkable, and also unfair, to be the next of kin of the unfortunate victims of this murder and listen to learned HC judges suspend the sentence in return for planting ten saplings each. This cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be termed justice—it is difficult to find fairness, reasonableness, and righteousness in it.

The implications for ecology are no less severe. With this order, the MP HC has unfortunately underlined the common perception that planting saplings, tending to trees, and protecting forests and water bodies are a penalty of sorts rather than aspects of necessary environmental work, especially in India’s cities.

Planting saplings was itself turned into a farce years ago when the political and social elite of the country did it as a photo op on days like World Environment Day. Across India, including in MP, thousands of trees are being ruthlessly and rampantly hacked to facilitate housing or infrastructure projects.

At such a time, when protection of trees should become an ecological obligation for all people across class and age, treating it as a form of judicial penalty for murder convicts sends out all the wrong signals. Even if the learned judges meant it as a social work or philanthropic aspect of a judicial sentence, it does not come good on the scale—neither for murder nor for trees.

Published on: Friday, October 31, 2025, 12:15 AM IST