New Delhi: Holding that delay in deciding mercy pleas or insanity/mental illness like schizophrenia could be grounds for commuting death sentences, the Supreme Court yesterday commuted sentences of 15 death row convicts to life imprisonment.
Thirteen of these were on account of delay in deciding mercy petitions and two due to mental illness of the convicts.
In another landmark decision that will ensure that there was no repeat of the controversy over hanging of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, the court said that there has to be 14 days gap between the communication of the mercy petition’s rejection to the convict and his family members and actual execution of the death sentence.
It also held there cannot be any distinction whether a person on death row was convicted for terror or other charges in entertaining their petition challenging the rejection of their mercy pleas on grounds of inordinate, unexplained and unreasonable delay by the president.
The right to seek mercy under article 72/161 of the constitution is a constitutional right and not a mere prerogative at the discretion or whims of the executive, it said.
Every constitutional duty must be fulfilled with due care and diligence “otherwise judicial interference is the command of the Constitution for upholding its values”, said a bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam, Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh.
“Considering the high status of office, the constitutional framers did not stipulate any outer time limit for disposing the mercy petitions under the said articles, which means it should be decided within reasonable time,” said Chief Justice Sathasivam speaking for the bench.
The court said that like the death sentence is passed lawfully, the execution of the sentence must also be in consonance with the constitutional mandate. “However, when the delay caused in disposing the mercy petitions is seen to be unreasonable, unexplained and exorbitant, it is the duty of this court to step in and consider this aspect.”
Those whose death sentences were commuted are Suresh, Ramji, Bilavendran, Simon, Gnanprakasam, Madiah, Praveen Kumar, Gurmeet Singh, Sonia, Sanjeev, Sundar Singh, Jafar Ali, Magan Lal Berala, Shivu and Jadeswamy.
IANS
