-The Indian Express Almost a month after the Supreme Court dismissed convicted Khalistani terrorist Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar's plea that his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, German President Joachim Gauck and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle have written to their Indian counterparts seeking clemency for Bhullar. Bhullar, who was convicted for the 1993 car bomb blast outside the Youth Congress office in the capital in which nine people were killed, was...
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Fixing accountability for unlawful killings in India-Divya Trivedi
-The Hindu Hundred and nine civilian deaths occurred due to police firing in 2011, according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Disproportionate use of force during demonstrations caused many deaths and at least 100 deaths were caused due to excessive use of force against demonstrators in Jammu and Kashmir in 2010. According to the NHRC, 2,560 deaths during encounters with police were reported between 1993 and 2008. Of this, 1,224 cases...
More »A tale of two verdicts
-The Hindu The Supreme Court's verdict last week quashing the President's rejection of a mercy petition by Mahendra Nath Das, who was to hang for a gruesome murder, shows a salutary approach to the question of whether a prolonged delay in disposing pleas for clemency should not be a ground for commuting death sentences to life terms. The court took note of the 12-year delay prior to the rejection of Das's...
More »Mahendra Nath Das’s mercy plea: Why SC commuted his death sentence -Dhananjay Mahapatra
-The Times of India Revealing the casual manner in which mercy petitions are dealt with, the Supreme Court found that former President APJ Abdul Kalam's 2005 note favouring commutation of Mahendra Nath Das's death penalty to life term was never placed before his successor Pratibha Patil, who rejected Das's mercy plea in 2011. This and the 12-year delay in deciding Das's mercy plea were cited by a bench of Justices G S...
More »Succumbing to the bogey of fear -Anup Surendranath
-The Hindu In the Bhullar case, the Supreme Court has created a category of ‘terrorists' among those sentenced to death without providing a constitutional basis for it Writing on extra-judicial killings in the Economic and Political Weekly in March 1996, K.G. Kannabiran narrated a very interesting anecdote from his experience on the Civil Rights Committee appointed by Jayaprakash Narayan to investigate fake encounters orchestrated during the Emergency against naxalites. While interacting with...
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