The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Centre whether a death row convict could knock the Governor’s doors for clemency after the President had earlier rejected his mercy petition.
The question assumes significance as it comes a day after the Mumbai blasts accused Yakub Memon filed a mercy petition with the Governor despite the President refusing to grant clemency in May last year.
Memon had approached the Governor with a mercy petition on Tuesday hours after Supreme Court dismissed his curative petition. The Court had earlier
rejected his review petition. This was the second mercy petition moved by Memon with the President rejecting the first in May 2014.
The five-judge bench which posed the query to Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar did not suggest any name but wished to know if the law dealing with mercy petitions posed any restriction on death row prisoners to keep filing mercy pleas.
Under the Constitution, Article 72 provides President the power to pardon or suspend the death penalty of a convict. Similar power is also available to Governor under Article 161. While President can entertain a mercy petition from any citizen of the country, a Governor has restriction on entertaining petitions from prisoners under the respective state’s jurisdiction.
In this context, the Court wished to know from Solicitor General whether the Constitution makers envisaged a situation where a condemned prisoner’s mercy petition can be rejected by the President but allowed by Governor. “Is there no bar under law to restrict a death row convict from filing multiple mercy petitions,” asked the bench comprising Chief Justice Hl Dattu, Justices FM Ibrahim Kalifulla, PC Ghose, AM Sapre and UU lalit.
Kumar agreed that the two provisions could lead to an “awkward” position but insisted that since there was no bar under law, it is often being misused. Due to this exercise, the cause of justice gets defeated as the punishment never attains finality. Of late, he referred to several cases where death row convicts have approached courts challenging dismissal of their mercy petitions. This further prolongs execution of sentence.
The bench asked the SG to ponder over this aspect in detail as hearing in the case will resume on Thursday.