The Supreme Court on Friday will decide whether death row convicts could escape the gallows due to delay in taking a call on their mercy petitions. The judgement to be delivered by a bench of Justices GS Singhvi and SJ Mukhopadhaya will decide the fate of several death row convicts either awaiting decision on mercy petitions or whose executions have been stayed by courts.
It was the plight of Devender Pal Singh Bhullar that made the Court to examine the issue. His mercy petition was pending since January 2003 and was decided only in 2011, soon after he filed a petition.
But another dimension was added to the case when NGO Justice on Trial Trust approached the Court to balance this interest with that of the society at large as the prisoners in question were guilty of crimes held by courts to be “rarest of rare”. It was argued that executive delay should not serve as a ground to upset judicial rulings which pronounced such prisoners with death.
The apex bench was also asked to consider if a certain time-frame for deciding mercy petitions could be fixed in order to uniformly apply the rule to prisoners irrespective of the political support for or against their hanging.
The Court while hearing these matters expressed concern on the arbitrary exercise of power in deciding the fate of mercy pleas. Since it involved the question of life and death, the Court stepped in to ensure liberties of citizens remain guided by constitutional principles and not extraneous considerations.