By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Friday dismissed a petition that wanted the government to ensure that the president acts swiftly on mercy pleas from prisoners on death row.
“Can this court give such a direction?” asked the bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justice R.V. Raveendran as it dismissed the petition by a Delhi resident Parmanand Katara.
The bench also sarcastically asked Katara if he had taken the consent of all the 22 prisoners on death row for early disposal of their mercy petitions.
As the petitioner replied in the negative, the bench dismissed the petition saying the affected persons should approach the court personally.
Katara, in his petition, had contended that he was raising “a unique issue in the larger public interest”, while seeking disposal of mercy petitions of 23 prisoners on death row, who have been languishing in solitary confinement in various jails across the country.
Katara said there is no time-limit prescribed in any law or jail manual for the president to decide the mercy petitions of condemned prisoners.
“This legislative gap is an unfortunate stage, which forces the condemned prisoners to languish in dark and dingy prison cells for an indefinite period, often stretching beyond a decade,” said Katara.
Katara added that while hanging could be the genuine punishment awarded to the prisoner for his crime, it was never contemplated that he would be kept languishing in jails as he waited for his death.
This amounts to double jeopardy for the prisoners, said Katara, but the court dismissed his petition scoffing at his argument.
The petition was filed in the wake of the country witnessing a sharp divison over the question of the early execution of Mohammed Afzal Guru, the man condemned to death for his involvement in the December 2001 terrorist attack on the Parliament.
By filing a mercy petition before the president, Guru triggered a debate over the time period taken by the president in deciding the mercy petitions of condemned prisoners.
Afzal Guru’s mercy petition is still shuttling between the union home ministry and the Delhi government for their inputs to the president to arrive at a decision.
According to the home ministry, there are a total of 44 prisoners on death row. There are 23 mercy petitions involving 43 of the prisoners, some of the petitions having been filed on behalf of more than one prisoner.
Out of the 23 petitions, two have been pending for less than a year, eight for one to three years and 13 for over three years.
Figures available with the home ministry show that during the last decade, the president has rejected seven mercy petitions and commuted the sentences of two, while in the previous decade out of 45 petitions 41 were rejected and four commuted.