But mercy pleas can’t be left hanging for ages
Two things appear clear from the ruling of the Supreme Court on April 12, which dismissed the petition of death row convict Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar. The first is that a delay in deciding on mercy pleas cannot be the ground for setting aside capital punishment. And the second is that such delays do not necessarily violate a convict's Fundamental Right under Article 21 of the Constitution. The apex court has done well to clear the air because various convicts whose mercy pleas were rejected by the President in recent years have tried to subvert justice by pleading leniency on those grounds. After all, the fact that mercy petitions have been rejected after lengthy delays does not in any way take away from the gravity of the crime that the convict had indulged in. Nor does it in any way mitigate the punishment of death, which in any case is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases in the country. The court's judgement closes the door on some 17 other cases where the convicts who were awarded the death penalty were hoping for respite on the premise that the authorities had sat on their mercy pleas for years together. As for the need to protect the Fundamental Right of the convict, it must be said that due punishment for a crime is not a violation of such a right, even if the punishment is late in coming. The ruling by a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court paves the way for Bhullar's hanging and for the process of law to be followed in similar cases, including that of the convicts in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination and the four aides of brigand Veerappan. Bhullar cannot claim that injustice has been done to him. The ‘Khalistani’ terrorist went through an elaborate legal process and had every opportunity to defend himself. A Trial Court had sentenced him to death in August 2001; a higher court confirmed the sentence the following year; the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal against the conviction not once, but on two occasions. Meanwhile Bhullar went to the President, who rejected his mercy plea in May 2011, and the matter thereafter returned to the apex court on the ground of ‘inordinate delay' in deciding the mercy petition. The court had reserved its verdict in April 2012. It may be that the story has not yet ended. The aggrieved party may decide to approach the court for a review, or seek a fresh hearing on its appeal before a larger Bench.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's ruling should not lead one to believe that the present state of affairs, where the President sits on mercy pleas for endless number of months and years, is an ideal one. It is not and needs to be changed. Keeping convicts on the death row for years cannot be condoned. There is no reason why Presidents should deliberate for ages on a petition because they cannot make up their mind or because the Government of the day refuses to be prompt in forwarding its opinion to the President on mercy pleas. More often than not, as we have seen in many recent cases, politics plays a significant role in such delays. There must be a mechanism for time-bound disposal of petitions. In addition, the scope for arbitrariness must be addressed. We have seen how Ms Pratibha Patil in her last days at Rashtrapati Bhavan, commuted the death sentences of convicts who had raped and murdered children.