New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday prematurely released a rape convict on life sentence after he spent over thirty years in custody, stating that continued imprisonment cannot be based on a "wrathful and vengeful system" which transforms punishment into "retributive death by incarceration". The court passed the judgement on petitions by the two convicts challenging the decision of the Sentence Review Board (SRB) to reject their pleas for premature release. Quoting from Anton Chekhov's short story 'The Bet', he said, "Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. His plea for premature release was rejected eighteen times. Tasleem's plea for premature release was rejected by the SRB four times.