The Hindu : National : Dhananjoy brother's plea to be heard today

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 12, 2004

National

National

Dhananjoy brother's plea to be heard today

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI, AUG. 11. In a last-minute bid to save his brother, Dhananjoy Chatterjee, from the gallows, Bikas Chatterjee today approached the Supreme Court seeking a stay on his execution on August 14. The court decided to hear his plea tomorrow.

Dhananjoy, who was sentenced to death for raping and murdering a school girl in Kolkata in March 1990, is to be hanged as the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, rejected his mercy petition on August 2.

Mr. Bikas Chatterjee has challenged the Presidential order on several grounds and made a strong plea for commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment.

Earlier in the day, a Bench comprising Justice N. Santosh Hegde, Justice S.B. Sinha and Justice A.K. Mathur permitted Mr. Bikas Chatterjee to file an application on his brother's behalf today itself and set tomorrow as the date for hearing the petition after the applicant's counsel Colin Gonsalves sought the court's permission to file the application and pleaded for fixing a date for early hearing.

Ten reasons

The petitioner gave 10 reasons why the execution should be stayed and the sentence commuted. He said there was an inordinate delay of eight years from 1994 to 2002 in the High Court after the apex court rejected his appeal. "When there is an inordinate delay in execution the condemned prisoner is entitled to approach the court requesting it to examine the question whether he can be executed or not."

The State failed to lead any evidence to prove that the convict was a continuing threat to society; procedural impropriety of non-consideration of all relevant material and mitigating circumstances by the Governor of West Bengal and the President of India; delay by the State in communicating the order of the Governor dated February 16, 1994 rejecting his mercy plea and the order of the President was not made available to the relatives; no legal aid was provided to the convict to defend his case and there was no fair trial; the petition deserved to be considered in view of flagrant violation of the country's international obligations by confirming the death sentence.

The arbitrary nature of the confirmation of the death sentence, the abundance of case law showing commutation in so many other cases were all relevant factors to be considered by the court.

Further the elements of rehabilitation/reform and deterrence had not been taken into account in this case since he had already suffered incarceration for 13 years.Further the conviction of Dhananjoy in a rape and murder case was totally based on circumstantial evidence and the failure of the police to carry out DNA test was also a ground for creating doubts about his involvement in the crime, the petitioner said.

He prayed for quashing the orders passed by the President rejecting the mercy plea, stay of the execution and commutation of the death sentence.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National