The Hindu : National : Krishna Iyer, others appeal to President

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 14, 2004

National

National

Krishna Iyer, others appeal to President

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI, AUG. 13. The former judge of the Supreme Court, V.R. Krishna Iyer, writer Khushwant Singh and eight other prominent personalities have appealed to the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, to stop the execution of Dhananjoy Chatterjee following the dismissal of the petition by the apex court seeking a stay of the execution fixed for tomorrow.

The People's Union for Democratic Rights has urged the National Human Rights Commission to approach the President to stay the execution till he disposed of the petition filed by Justice Krishna Iyer and others.

The signatories include Rajendra Yadav, writer; Mahesh Bhatt, film maker; Sudhir Tailang, cartoonist; Manjula Padmanabhan, writer; Tarun Tejpal, Editor, Tehelka; Prashant Bhushan, advocate; Geeta Chandran, artiste; and Abhijit Sen, economist and Member, Planning Commission.

Global shift

They drew the President's attention to the fact that there had been a general shift worldwide towards total abolition or towards the non-use of death penalty.

They said the International Criminal Court set up in 1998 by 120 countries did not allow itself to hand down death sentence even though it oversees large-scale heinous crimes including rape, murder, crimes against humanity and genocide. The United Nations Security Council had also disallowed death penalty by the International Criminal Tribunals trying crimes in Rwanda and the former Yogoslavia. As many as 79 countries had abolished death penalty completely, 15 had abolished for all except wartime crimes and 23 have it in law but not in practice for the last 10 years.

"In the light of the above, we beseech you as the highest constitutional functionary to be generous in the exercise of gentle compassion and commute the sentence of death imposed on Dhananjoy Chatterjee," they said.

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

National