India's Supreme Court concerned over delay in deciding mercy petitions

New Delhi, Feb 22 (PTI) Expressing concern over delay by the Centre and the state governments in deciding mercy pleas of prisoners on death row, the Supreme Court of India today sought from them the records of all such cases. A bench of justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhyay said the home secretaries of all the states would send the records of all cases of mercy pleas to states within three days to the Centre, which would then place the same before the apex Indian court. The bench added there have been cases where mercy pleas were decided after 11 years which is a sufficiently long time. The court brushed aside the Centre's contention that delay was caused due to repeated petitions filed by condemned prisoners in courts. "There is no bar in filing repeated petitions," the bench observed. The court was hearing a petition filed by Devender Pal Singh Bhullar who was awarded death penalty for triggering a bomb blast in New Delhi in September 1993 killing nine people. Bhullar has been pleading that his capital punishment be commuted to life imprisonment as there has been an "inordinate" delay in deciding on his mercy petition and that he is not mentally sound. During an earlier hearing, Bhullar's counsel had argued that the delay in dealing with the mercy pleas pending since 2003 amounted to "dehumanising" the convict and subjecting him to "cruelty." He had said Bhullar's prolonged incarceration awaiting his execution amounted to cruelty and violated his Fundamental Right to life under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The Supreme Court had on March 26, 2002, dismissed Bhullar's appeal against the death sentence, awarded by the trial court and endorsed by the Delhi High Court. He had then filed a review petition which was also dismissed on December 17, 2002. Bhullar then moved a curative petition which too had been rejected by the apex court on March 12, 2003. Bhullar, meanwhile, filed a mercy petition before the President on January 14, 2003. The President, after a lapse of over eight years, dismissed his mercy plea on May 25 this year. Earlier, in an affidavit in the Supreme Court, the Centre had justified the delay of over eight years in deciding Bhullar's mercy plea and said "processing a mercy petition is purely a Constitutional process which takes time". It had also said that "delay in disposal of the mercy petition is not a mitigating circumstance for commutation of death sentence and also does not reduce the gravity of the crime." PTI