Presidential pardon for 8 on death row

According to an Right to Information reply, President Pratibha Patil, in a June 15 decision, has commuted death sentences of eight men, awarded in two separate cases of murder, to life imprisonments.
One of the cases was that of Shyam Manohar, Sheo Ram, Prakash, Suresh, Ravinder and Harish, convicts in a case of murder, including that of a 10-year-old boy.

The sentence was pronounced in October 1997, which was then upheld by the Supreme Court.

The file was re-submitted to the President’s secretariat on February 23.

In another case, Patil commuted the death sentences of Dharmendra Kumar and Narendra Yadav to life imprisonments.

They were found guilty of murder of five members of a family.

Kumar and Yadav, from Uttar Pradesh, had filed the mercy petition in 1999, which was re-submitted to President’s secretariat in March.

So far, Patil has decided on three mercy pleas, in all which she reduced death sentences to life imprisonments. Before the latest cases of pardon, she granted mercy on November 23, 2009, to R Govindasamy of Tamil Nadu.

Twenty one more such pleas are pending with the President’s secretariat while three are with the home ministry, according to the information provided by the secretariat to S C Agrawal on his Right to Information application.

One of the pleas on which Patil has yet to decide is that of Afzal Guru, who was awarded death for the 1998 terror attack on Parliament.

The home ministry had on June 23 recommended to the President that Guru did not deserve a pardon, and hence his plea should be rejected.