The Hindu : National : President decides to review murder convict's case

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Friday, Jun 25, 2004

National

National

President decides to review murder convict's case

By Malabika Bhattacharya

KOLKATA, JUNE 24. In a dramatic turn of events, the hanging of a rape and murder convict, Dhananjoy Chatterjee, slated for early June 25 at the Alipore Central Jail was stayed minutes before the hangman was formally positioned inside the jail, following the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's decision to review the case in the light of a clutch of mercy petitions.

The Union Home Ministry communicated the President's decision on a re-think, taken on the basis of the advice given by the Ministry to the State Advocate-General as well as Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee 's Government on early Thursday.

According to sources, the Ministry spurred into action by petitions from people's rights groups, Amnesty International and eminent persons like Mahashweta Devi, Aparna Sen, Mrinal Sen and many others.

"There appears to be room for re-think by the President,'' the Ministry is believed to have said in its communication to the office of the President.

The State Government had reviewed the case on Tuesday and decided not to advise the Governor to consider any fresh mercy petition in view of the strong public sentiments pertaining to the incident in March 1990 in which a 14-year-old girl, Hetal Parekh, was raped and murdered in her family's apartment in a high-rise building in South Kolkata by Dhananjoy Chatterjee, then a 26-year-old liftman-cum-caretaker. After committing the crime, Chatterjee disappeared following which police had launched a massive hunt and caught up with him in his village in Bankura district.

There had not been any single witness to the incident which had shaken up the city but the police had produced a chargesheet on the basis of circumstantial evidence which served as the basis of the death sentence first given in 1991 by a trial court only to be confirmed by the High Court and the Supreme Court in the following years.

In 1994, the Chatterjee family had unsuccessfully petitioned the then President for mercy. Between 1994 and 2004, the Dhananjoy Chatterjee case, for some reason, did not move forward.

A series of reports in a section of newspapers a few months ago woke up the State Government, forcing it to make a forward movement on the order for execution of the death sentence.

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