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Supreme Court commutes 15 death sentences
SC commutes 15 death sentences, sandalwood smugglers, aides of Veerappan. In a landmark judgment that could have far-reaching impact, the Supreme Court on Tuesday commuted the death sentences of 15 convicts to life-term.
- Govt cannot sit on mercy pleas for years
- Solitary confinement unconstitutional
- Execution must within 14 days of rejection of mercy plea
- Petitioners include four aides of Veerappan
- Assassins of Rajiv Gandhi likely to get relief
New Delhi: In a landmark judgment that could have far-reaching impact, the Supreme Court on Tuesday commuted the death sentences of 15 convicts to life-term.
A three-judge Supreme Court Bench, headed by Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam and comprising Justice Rajan Gogoi and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, gave its verdict on a batch of petitions filed by 15 death row convicts seeking its direction for commutation of their sentence to life term on the grounds of delay in deciding mercy plea and mental illness. The petitions include those of four aides of notorious sandalwood smuggler Veerappan. They filed their mercy petition in 2004, which was rejected nine years later.
The Supreme Court said that a convict, given death sentence, should be hanged within 14 days of his mercy plea being rejected and the government cannot sit over mercy petitions for years without assigning proper reasons.
This verdict is bound to impact the death sentence awarded to the assassins of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and that of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, who attempted to assassinate the then Youth Congress President Maninderjit Singh Bitta in 1993 in a powerful bomb blast in the Capital, in which nine people were killed. The court overruled its own verdict in Khalistani terrorist Devinderpal Singh Bhullar’s case in which it had held that delay in deciding mercy plea cannot be a ground for commutation of death sentence. Death sentence in such cases can be commuted to life imprisonment on the ground of their mental illness, it said.
In the case of the assassins of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, their mercy petition was filed 11 years ago with the President, during the Vajpayee Government, which sat over it. It was finally disposed of by the then President Pratibha Patil, who rejected it in 2011.
The bench said, “In the cases of Suresh, Ramji, Bilavendran, Simon, Gnanprakasam, Madiah, Praveen Kumar, Gurmeet Singh, Sonia, Sanjeev, Sundar Singh, Jafar Ali, Magan Lal Berala, Shivu and Jadeswamy, we commute the death sentence into imprisonment for life.” The Supreme Court has also laid down the guidelines for effective governing of the procedure of filing mercy petitions and for the cause of the death convicts. “It is well-settled law that Executive action and the legal procedure adopted to deprive a person of his life or liberty must be fair, just and reasonable and the protection of Article 21 of the Constitution of India inheres in every person, even death-row prisoners, till the very last breath of their lives,” the Supreme Court judgment stated.
The verdict came on a petition by the People’s Union of Democratic Rights (PUDR) for the four associates of the slain forest brigand Veerappan. Their mercy petitions were recently rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee.
The Supreme Court judgment stated, “Keeping a convict in suspense while consideration of his mercy petition by the President for many years is certainly an agony for him/her. It creates adverse physical conditions and psychological stresses on the convict under sentence of death. Indisputably, this Court, while considering the rejection of the clemency petition by the President, under Article 32 read with Article 21 of the Constitution, cannot excuse the agonizing delay caused tothe convict only on the basis of the gravity of the crime.” It stated inordinate and unreasonable delay is akin to torture. “Whether the convict is a terrorist or an ordinary criminal, delay is a ground for commutation of death sentence.” It accepted that prolonged imprisonment of a convict awaiting execution amounts to cruelty and violates the Fundamental Right to Life under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The bench said that mercy pleas and should be given a chance to meet their family members before they are executed. It also held that solitary confinement of a prisoner, including death row convict, is unconstitutional and it should not be allowed in the prisons.
The bench also said that execution of death sentence should be carried out within 14 days after rejection of the mercy plea.
