Calcutta, June 20: The high court will directly question a lifer who has spent 19 years in jail, the first time the appellate authority has decided to do so.

When convicts appeal a trial court order, high court judges usually confine themselves to going through the case papers and hearing lawyers from both sides before delivering their verdict.

But while hearing Nikhil Mondal’s appeal today, the division bench of Justices G.C. Gupta and K.K. Prasad felt the questions that the Malda additional sessions judge had put to him were inadequate. So they decided to question the convict, in jail since 1989.

Nikhil had been imprisoned for abetting his wife’s suicide. A resident of Harishchandrapur in Malda, 325km from Calcutta, he had married neighbour Potobala in 1986. Three years later, her father alleged that his son-in-law had driven his daughter to death.

He also alleged that Nikhil had started torturing Potobala for more dowry days after their marriage. “Unable to bear the regular torture, she drank poison,” the father said.

Before delivering his verdict in March 1993, the trial judge had questioned Nikhil for three days.

“But the questions were inadequate and improper. The judge never tried to find out his motive for abetting the suicide,” said Nikhil’s lawyer Partha Sarathi Bhattacharya.

The division bench went through the records containing the trial judge’s questions and Nikhil’s answers and felt that Bhattacharya’s submission had merit.

The superintendent of the Malda Correctional Home has to appear in court with the lifer on July 11.