Another confusion was created on the mercy petition of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru as his lawyer claimed that the condemned prisoner has sent a petition to the Supreme Court for a direction to the Union government to take an early decision on his clemency plea but the authorities in the top court denied receiving any such application.
Lawyer N.D. Pancholi, who claims to be the advocate for Afzal, told this newspaper “I met him in jail last week. He was given the idea to send the petition directly to the Supreme Court as it will have more effect.”
“In his petition, Afzal has stated that the unnecessary delay on his mercy petition is causing mental torture and harassment to him, which is worst than the death penalty. A direction has been sought to the government to take an early decision. If they want to hang him then hang, if a decision is to be taken otherwise it should be taken,” Mr Panchauli said.
Panchauli further said that Afzal has pleaded “if the government is not able to decide it early then at least he should be sent to an environment which is better than the solitary confinement, preferably a jail in Jammu and Kashmir where his family members can come to meet him... environment in solitary confinement is very worse than death.” His family members could not come to Delhi to meet him in central Tihar Jail regularly as it involved heavy expenditure.
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Surrogate twins can go to Germany
Age correspondent
New Delhi
May 26: German couple Jan Balaz and Susanne Anna Lohlhad finally won the long drawn legal battle on their surrogate twins’ back home journey as their country agreed to grant the children three-month “travel visa” to facilitate their adoption in a third country as surrogacy is a crime in Germany.
Following a statement made to this effect by solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam before a Supreme Court’s vacation bench, the top court, which virtually had “cajoled” both Indian and German authorities to resolve the issue on humanitarian ground, cleared the last hurdle on the two-and-half-year-old twins back home. The apex court, which was approached by the Centre after the Gujarat HC had directed the Centre to provide Indian citizenship to the twins as they were born in India, expressed happiness on the resolution of the matter. The case had thrown various “legal complexities” due to Germany’s strict anti-surrogacy laws and India having no laws to regulate such births. The German authorities agreed to grant only “travel visa” to the twins, born to Gujarat based woman — Martha Immanual Khristy — with whom Balaz and Susanne had signed a contract to be a surrogate mother.