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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | SC directs govt to provide details of mercy pleas

SC directs govt to provide details of mercy pleas

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published Published on Nov 16, 2011   modified Modified on Nov 16, 2011
-The Telegraph
 
The Supreme Court today directed the government to provide information about all mercy petitions pending before the President and governors.

An apex court bench passed the ruling while hearing the plea of Punjab militant Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar.

Bhullar wants his death sentence to be commuted to life term because of inordinate delay in deciding on his mercy plea.

The bench, headed by Justice G.S. Singhvi, observed that it could not confine itself to hearing pleas only from those death row convicts who had access to legal representation.

“A large number of people are not in a position to move the court,” Justice Singhvi said. He named Ram Jethmalani and T.R. Andhyarujina as amicus curiae to present such cases to the court.

Jethmalani is currently defending three death row convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi killing case.

The bench said it wanted to know how the government had dealt with the mercy pleas of death row convicts and asked additional solicitor-general Haren P. Raval to present the data in four weeks.

The government was also asked to specifically present all records between 2005 to 2011, the time during which Bhullar’s petition was pending with Rashtrapati Bhavan.

This is to possibly establish whether the government was arbitrary in its decisions and whether there was application of mind in taking a call on whether to accept or reject a mercy petition.

The bench indicated that it would look into when these petitions were submitted to the President or governors, as the case may be, how these were dealt with and whether it was disposed off or not.

In his plea for commutation of his death sentence, Bhullar has made three key points the main plank.

First, a split verdict that holds him guilty, two out of three judges had held him guilty. Second, the fact that he was convicted on the basis of his confessional statement made to police under the Tada and third, the delay in rejecting his mercy plea.

His lawyer K.T.S. Tulsi said that since Bhullar was convicted, the trend has been to sentence to death a person on the basis of unanimity of judges, and not less than five judges. He sought court leniency for his client on this ground.

Today’s court order could well mean a further delay in deciding Bhullar’s plea.

In all likelihood, if the court begins looking at all the mercy petitions pending with Rashtrapati Bhavan, the issue may have to be placed before a larger bench.

Death penalty barbaric

Supreme Court sitting judge A.K. Ganguly while addressing a conference today observed that death penalty was “barbaric”, “anti-life”, “undemocratic” and “irresponsible”.

Ganguly was speaking at the conference on abolition of death penalty in India organised by the Jindal Global Law School in Delhi. He, however, added that these were his personal views.


The Telegraph, 16 November, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111116/jsp/nation/story_14755213.jsp


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