The Supreme Court was hearing Salem’s plea against the Bombay High Court’s July 2025 order, which prima facie found that he had not yet completed the 25-year period. File | Photo credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap
The Supreme Court on Monday (February 16, 2026) allowed convicted gangster Abu Salem to withdraw his pardon plea on the grounds that he had served a quarter of a century behind bars in India.
Salem, convicted of the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, was extradited from Portugal on November 11, 2005 after a long legal battle. He argued that his sentence could not exceed 25 years as per the assurance given by India to Portugal for his extradition.
A bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath quashed his appeal, leaving it open for Salem to approach the Bombay High Court for timely placement of his pending case. The Supreme Court was hearing Salem’s plea against the Bombay High Court’s July 2025 order, which prima facie found that he had not yet completed the 25-year period.
In an earlier hearing, the court had asked Salem’s legal team, led by senior advocate Rishi Malhotra, to register the rules of the Maharashtra Penal Jail to ascertain whether he is entitled to post-conviction relief under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act.
In July 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in a judgment that “when the appellant (Salem) completes 25 years of his sentence, the Central Government is bound to advise the President in the exercise of his powers under Article 72 of the Constitution and release the appellant in terms of national obligations and principles based on judicial comity.”
However, the Supreme Court refused to calculate the 25-year timeline from September 18, 2002, when Salem was detained in Portugal for another crime. “The country’s criminal law has no extraterritorial application,” the court reasoned.
Salem’s case was built on his argument that his life sentence was illegal because then Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister LK Advani had given the Portuguese court a “solemn sovereign assurance” that he would not be sentenced to death or serve more than 25 years in prison. However, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which prosecuted the case against the gangster, maintained that Mr. Advani’s assurance was no guarantee.
In fact, an affidavit filed by the Home Ministry in 2022 urged the court to focus on deciding Salem’s appeal against his conviction and life sentence in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case on its merits rather than taking into account any “assurances” provided by India to Portugal. In February 2015, a special TADA court awarded Salem life imprisonment in another case related to the 1995 murder of builder Pradeep Jain in Mumbai.
Published – 16 Feb 2026 22:14 IST