Chief Justice of India (CJI) Altamas Kabir on Sunday said that families of death row convicts should be informed in advance about their execution, a grim reminder to the Centre’s faux pas over Parliament attack convict Mohammad Afzal, whose family got intimation of his hanging days after he was dead.
Quite realising that speaking on the subject would attract unwarranted controversy, CJI favoured to play down the controversy by saying, “Issues of the past should not be raked up again.” He did admit though, “The principle has always been that the family members were told about when the things would happen. As far as I know, steps were taken to inform them.”
The comment by CJI comes a day after the SC cited the example of averting an Afzal-like situation to justify stay on execution of death for eight death row convicts, following rejection of their mercy pleas by the President.
Union law Minister Ashwani Kumar who was present with CJI as he spoke to the media, said, “let bygones be bygones.” When asked what he felt on this issue as the law Minister, he ducked a reply by saying, “I will rather comment on things that will happen in future and not what has happened in the past. These are matters which are very subjective. I would rather not comment.”
When asked for his view on mercy petitions decided after inordinate delay, he said “Postmortems can be unending. I am not going to comment on what were or were not the shortcomings. As far as the present batch of petitions are concerned that matter is before the Supreme Court. It is sub-judice. I will certainly not comment on that,” he said.
Taking a political stand on mercy petitions, Kumar said, “There should not be delay in disposing the mercy petitions.” However, CJI Kabir was more candid to state, “If a death penalty were to be awarded and it is there under the system then the quicker things are done the better it is for everybody.”