SENTENCE COMMUTED
Fresh lease of life for man on death row
AmitAnand.Choudhary@timesgroup.com
New Delhi:23.02.2019
Almost a decade after losing the legal battle in the Supreme Court which upheld his death sentence, a condemned prisoner got a fresh lease of life on Friday with the apex court commuting his sentence to imprisonment till death on grounds of delay in deciding on his mercy plea.
The accused was convicted for the murder of his wife and five children and was
awarded the death penalty by the trial court in 2006 and the sentence was upheld by the Madhya Pradesh high court in 2006. The SC confirmed his death sentence in 2009. Immediately after the apex court order, he had filed mercy petition but his plea was decided after five years when the President rejected it in 2014.
Armed with the Supreme Court’s 2014 verdict which had held that death sentence could be commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds of delay in deciding on mercy petition of death row prisoners, he again started the legal battle to save his life and filed a fresh petition saying his sentence be commuted because of inordinate delay in his case.
A bench of Justices N V Ramana, Deepak Gupta and Indira Banerjee agreed with his plea and commuted the sentence. The court noted that there was no delay on the part of the Centre or the secretariat of the President in dealing with the mercy petition and it was dealt with expeditiously but delay was on part of the Madhya Pradesh government which kept sitting on the mercy petition for four years before forwarding it to the President. The state government, which was issued notice way back in 2014 by the court to give explanation for the delay, failed to turn up in the court and the SC passed the order.
For full report, www.toi.in
Fresh lease of life for man on death row
AmitAnand.Choudhary@timesgroup.com
New Delhi:23.02.2019
Almost a decade after losing the legal battle in the Supreme Court which upheld his death sentence, a condemned prisoner got a fresh lease of life on Friday with the apex court commuting his sentence to imprisonment till death on grounds of delay in deciding on his mercy plea.
The accused was convicted for the murder of his wife and five children and was
awarded the death penalty by the trial court in 2006 and the sentence was upheld by the Madhya Pradesh high court in 2006. The SC confirmed his death sentence in 2009. Immediately after the apex court order, he had filed mercy petition but his plea was decided after five years when the President rejected it in 2014.
Armed with the Supreme Court’s 2014 verdict which had held that death sentence could be commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds of delay in deciding on mercy petition of death row prisoners, he again started the legal battle to save his life and filed a fresh petition saying his sentence be commuted because of inordinate delay in his case.
A bench of Justices N V Ramana, Deepak Gupta and Indira Banerjee agreed with his plea and commuted the sentence. The court noted that there was no delay on the part of the Centre or the secretariat of the President in dealing with the mercy petition and it was dealt with expeditiously but delay was on part of the Madhya Pradesh government which kept sitting on the mercy petition for four years before forwarding it to the President. The state government, which was issued notice way back in 2014 by the court to give explanation for the delay, failed to turn up in the court and the SC passed the order.
For full report, www.toi.in
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