PIL filed in SC for disposal of mercy petitions

A PIL was filed on Wednesday in the Supreme Court, for framing of specific guidelines for disposal of mercy petitions of death row convicts in a time-bound manner. The victims and their families felt cheated in such cases, as capital punishments were commuted to a sentence for imprisonment for life, due to delay.

The petitioner-advocate, Shiv Kumar Tripathi contended that undue delay in disposal of the mercy petitions gave rise to public unrest and created doubts and suspicion in the mind of public at large.

“There is no specified written procedure and guidelines for disposing of the mercy petitions within a time-bound manner, the same is resulting in arbitrariness and discrimination,” he contended.

The petitioner pointed out that the power of pardon under the Constitution was executive in nature and was exercised effectively by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Although there are no statutory grounds or guidelines for granting pardon but as per the statement of the Ministry itself, factors generally considered in examining the mercy petition under Article 72 of the Constitution included personality of the accused such as age, sex or mental state, and circumstances of the case, conduct of the offender, medical abnormality falling short of legal insanity and so on.

“The major defect in these guidelines is that the government is not bound by it. These are basically the internal grounds that may or may not be taken into consideration those are not the statutory guidelines. This exercise of the power sans clear-cut guidelines is a major cause of concern,” he said.

The petitioner said a prescribed form should be put in place, as those who filed the mercy petition at times may not provide complete information because of illiteracy or unawareness or just to conceal certain details.