Mercy Petition piling up on Pratibha Patil's desk

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Pakhi Hussain

04 July, 2011

The president of India has a lot of work on her hand, what with six cases of mercy pleas in 2011 itself. She has a total of 17 mercy plea on her desk, which have accumulated from 2005.

MERCY PETITIONS are piling up on the desk of Indian President Pratibha Patil and waiting to be resolved. After a RTI was filed by Subhash Chandra AgarwaL, it came into the public notice that as many as 17 mercy petition cases have piled up for the President to resolve. The President’s Secretariat said that some cases are really old, and were filed in 2005, and around 6 cases were filed in 2011 alone.

The oldest case is of Sushil Murmu from Jharkhand, who was accused of killing a nine-year-old child for religious purposes, and he pleaed for President’s mercy in 2005 but his case is yet to be heard. Jafar Ali, having killed his wife and daughter, has also filed a mercy petition on August 2006, but nothing has been done for the same. Gurmeet Singh submitted his petition before Pratibha Patil on Dec 11, 2009 - after allegedly killing 13 family members.

Answering to the Right to Information filed by Subhas Chandra Agarwal, the President’s Secretariat also said that 10 people have been provided with life imprisonment after they filed for mercy petition to the President. Many mercy pleas were also rejected by the President. In May, she rejected the mercy plea of Mahendra Nath Das alias Govinda Das, who hacked the head of 68-year-old Harakanta Das, secretary of the Guwahati Truck Drivers Association, in Guwahati in 1996. Das was given life imprisonment in 1997. Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar’s plea was also rejected, after he was imprisoned in a 1993 car bombing case in New Delhi.

The RTI also asked a crucial question about Afzal Guru's petition, who was involved in the parliament attack on Dec 31, 2001, which is yet to be forwarded to the President. The same question was asked in the Rajya Sabha during the budget session in February. The Home Minister had said, then that the case was under examination. The last execution in India was carried out in Kolkata of a rapist and a killer of a school girl Dhananjoy Chatterjee.