The Hindu : National : Two dozen mercy petitions pending

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Two dozen mercy petitions pending

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Nearly two dozen mercy petitions are pending with the Union Home Ministry, the latest being the plea submitted on behalf of Mohammad Afzal facing execution in the 2001 Parliament attack case.

The petitions include those of Nalini, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, who were sentenced to death on May 11, 1999 by the Supreme Court in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

The earliest petitions, dating back to 1992, are those of four Punjab convicts, who have been facing execution since then.

The last hanging in the country took place in Kolkata on August 14, 2004, when 39-year-old Dhananjoy Chatterjee was executed after the rejection of his two petitions. The charge was that he hit a 14-year-old girl brutally in the head and raped her even as she was dying.

His case triggered a debate on capital punishment with human rights activists keeping vigil and taking out a procession outside the Alipore jail in Kolkata.

The Ministry receives 15-20 mercy petitions every year, say officials. No time frame has been fixed for dealing with them.

From April 2000 to February 2001, 28 petitions for commutation of death sentence under Article 72 of the Constitution were dealt with. During the same period, the Ministry received 10 other petitions for remission of sentence and pardon from persons sentenced under Central laws.

The President during this period granted remission of the balance sentence to five Latvian nationals, convicted in the Purulia arms drop case, and to a Norwegian convicted under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985.

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