New Delhi: The Supreme Court yesterday issued notice to the centre on a public interest litigation (PIL) challenging former president Pratibha Patil’s decision commuting the death sentence of five people to life imprisonment. The people whose death sentences were commuted were convicted in brutal cases of child rape — in one case, the child was beheaded.
Pinki Virani, the petitioner, who is also a well known author, sought the quashing of the order passed by the then president, commuting the death sentence of Molai Ram and Santosh Kumar Yadav, Sushil Murmu, Satish and Bantu, to life in prison. The petitioner has urged the court to set a date, and execute the five.
Senior counsel Shekhar Naphade, appearing for petitioner Pinki Virani, told an apex court bench headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam: “The Supreme Court has itself laid down parameters under which death penalties are awarded. These are crimes of extreme brutality. How can Article 72 (power of president to grant pardons) be exercised to commute death penalty to life imprisonment?”
Article 72 of the constitution empowers the president to commute a death sentence to life imprisonment. The PIL has urged the court to lay down guidelines under which the president could commute the death sentence to life imprisonment; the decision should be taken only after objective analysis, and only if serious aberration is found in the application of the “rarest of rare” case principle, or if the award of death sentence was done with no unanimity among the judges, the petitioner has said.
Virani has written extensively on child abuse in India. The petitioner said the apex court had laid down seven parameters under which the death sentence can be awarded, treating the matter as a “rarest of rare” case.
One of the seven parameters under which murder is considered a rarest of rare case includes murder of minors (described under the Juvenile Justice Act), pregnant women, and people with mental and physical disability.
IANS
