A court in the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir sentences an offender to imprisonment for life.…

Section 5 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 allows the appropriate Government, without the offender's consent, to commute any punishment under the Sanhita in accordance with section 474 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. Section 474(b) permits a sentence of imprisonment for life to be commuted to imprisonment for a term "not less than seven years". The former ceiling of fourteen years (formerly s.55 of the Ranbir Penal Code) has not been carried forward; "not less than three years" is the floor under section 474(c) for commuting a sentence of seven years or more; and there is no twenty-year limit. Separately, section 475 of the BNSS bars release before fourteen years of actual imprisonment where life imprisonment was imposed for an offence punishable with death or results from commutation of a death sentence.