-The Hindu Supreme Court ruling gives the benefit of the doubt to accused The Supreme Court judgment, in the case of Sangeet v. State of Haryana, delivered on November 20 could make the government give the benefit of the doubt to 14 death-row Convicts including Afzal Guru, whose mercy petitions have been turned over to it by the President for fresh advice. The one mercy petition presently pending with President Pranab Mukherjee, after...

-The Times of India As many as 477 Convicts awarded death sentence are awaiting hanging in various jails across the country, the government told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. Maharashtra, which last month hanged LeT terrorist Ajmal Kasab in a secret operation after President Pranab Mukherjee rejected his mercy petition, has 50 Convicts in its jails awaiting hanging, putting it third on the list of states with maximum number of Convicts awaiting...

-The Hindu There is a need to identify cases in which the courts might have erred in applying the Bachan Singh principle that limits the imposition of the death penalty The Supreme Court’s five-judge Constitution Bench judgment in Bachan Singh (1980) is the source of contemporary death penalty jurisprudence in India. Its major contribution was to limit the imposition of death penalty to the rarest of rare crimes, and for laying down...

-The Hindu By not informing Ajmal Kasab of his right to seek a judicial review of the rejection of his mercy petition, the UPA government has committed a serious wrong The hurried and secretive hanging of Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab is both an administrative wrong and a constitutional impropriety. The Manmohan Singh government and the UPA chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, owe it to the nation and the whole world to explain why their...

-The Hindu By not publicly disclosing the reasons for rejecting Ajmal Kasab’s mercy petition, Pranab Mukherjee missed an excellent opportunity to contribute to the rule of law President Pranab Mukherjee’s decision to reject the mercy petition submitted by the lone convict in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, is an instance of how public perceptions about a convict’s guilt can camouflage the government’s duty to explain the decision. The...