In a breather for death-row convict Yakub Abdul Razak Memon — a key conspirator with Dawood Ibrahim in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case — the Supreme Court on Monday stayed his execution and referred his plea to a Constitution Bench that reviews petitions in death penalty cases. The court ruled that the hearing will be carried out in an open court, not in chambers.
A Bench of justices JS Kehar and C Nagappan sought responses from the State of Maharashtra, the law Ministry and the apex court Registrar, on the plea of Memon to commute his death sentence to life, saying, “In the meantime, the execution will remain stayed.” Memon, who claims to be suffering from Schizophrenia since 1996, said he is behind bars for the last nearly 20 years and now the threat of execution is looming. He contended that a convict cannot be awarded life imprisonment and the death penalty for the same offence.
“For that the petitioner (Memon) has been continuously in custody since August 5, 1994, and was never released on bail. He has already undergone almost 20 years of detention and executing a death sentence after a time lag of 20 years would amount to subjecting him to both life imprisonment as well as death sentence,” the petition said.
Senior advocate Upamanyu Hazarika, appearing for Memon, said a similar plea by a death-row convict in the 2000 Red Fort attack case, Mohammed Arif, had been referred to a five-judge Constitution Bench.Staying the execution of the death penalty, the Bench referred Memon’s plea, filed through lawyer Shubail Farook, to a Constitutional Bench that seeks setting aside of a provision of the Supreme Court Rules that provides for the in-chamber hearing of review pleas emanating from the dismissal of appeals in the death penalty cases.
The apex court had on March 21, 2013, upheld the death sentence of Memon and commuted the death penalty awarded by a special TADA court to 10 others, who had planted RDX explosives-laden vehicles at various places in Mumbai, to life term by distinguishing their roles from that of Memon.