The Bombay high court upheld the direction in 2016.In a judgment authored by Justice Viswanathan, the Supreme Court held that the legal position on consecutive life sentences had already been settled by the Constitution bench in Muthuramalingam, which had explained that life imprisonment ordinarily extends to the remainder of the convict’s natural life unless the sentence is commuted or remitted by the competent authority.The Constitution bench had reasoned that requiring a person to undergo two consecutive life sentences would be anomalous because a person has only one life to live. It had also clarified that awarding multiple life sentences for separate offences is legally permissible, but directing them to run consecutively is not.“The award of multiple sentences of imprisonment for life so that such sentences are superimposed over one another is entirely different from directing such sentence to run consecutively,” the earlier judgment had held.Applying that principle, the bench partly allowed Koli’s appeal and set aside the direction that the two life sentences should run one after the other.

It maintained the remaining parts of the trial court’s conviction and sentencing order, including the fines imposed for the offences.The court specifically directed that the life sentence for murder and the life sentence for rape and wrongful confinement be superimposed over each other, so that remission or commutation of one would not automatically reduce the other.