President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected the mercy petition of Rajendra Pralhadrao Wasnik, who had raped and killed a three-year-old girl in Maharashtra’s Amrawati district on March 2, 2007. The President agreed with the advice of Home Ministry and rejected his mercy plea on July 31.
The Supreme Court Bench comprising justices AK Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar had held on February 29, 2012 that Wasnik deserved capital punishment as he was a married man of 31 years who had committed the offence on the pretext of buying the girl biscuits.
“First and foremost is that the crime committed by the accused is heinous. In fact, it is not only heinous, but is a brutal and inhuman crime where a married person, aged 31 years, chooses to lure a three-year-old minor girl child on the pretext of buying her biscuits and then raping her,” the apex court bench had ruled.
With this, Mukherjee has signed 22 death warrants involving 29 people in last two years of his Presidency. Those sent to gallows include Mumbai attack convict Mohammed Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru, who was found guilty in Parliament attack case. The President has already rejected five petitions last month including that of Nithari serial killer Surinder Koli.
The President has only commuted the death sentence for Atbir who was found guilty of murdering three relatives over a property dispute. He was sentenced to death by a sessions court in 2004 for the murder of his step-mother, step-sister and step-brother over a property dispute in 1996. Higher Courts had ratified the verdict.