Even as a lot of hullabaloo is being raised over the “delay” in decision on the mercy petition of Parliament attack convict Mohammad Afzal Guru which was made in 2006, at least 16 out of the 29 such petitions pending with the President’s secretariat were last submitted in 2005. While a couple of them are under consideration of the state governments, many of these have been re-submitted twice. A few others have been re-submitted thrice.
The information has been revealed by the union home ministry’s judicial cell in an RTI reply furnished to petitioner S.C. Agarwal. The secretariat has clarified that no specific time frame can be given for decision on the petitions. As per the reply, in at least 10 cases out of the 16 petitions pending decision since 2005 were re-submitted twice. Some of the cases in which the mercy pleas have been lying since 2005 include that of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins and Devender Pal Singh Bhullar, convict in bombing of the Youth Congress office in 1993 in the Delhi.
There are also a few petitions, which first reached the President’s secretariat in 1997, 1998 and 1999 and are yet to be decided. Earlier, over a period of 1981 to May 2010, the President’s secretariat has disposed off at least 77 mercy petitions. In 10 cases, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Out of the 10 cases of commutation, only one case was decided after a gap of 11 years. In one such case, the mercy plea was rejected within the year of the petition being filed. But was commuted to life imprisonment on appeal two years later. In three cases, death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment four years after filing the mercy petition. The rest of the cases were decided within three years or less.
Incidentally, as per the reply, nearly one third of the 77 disposed petitions were decided in the same year. Most others were within four years.