WAITING FOR MERCY

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Ajmal Kasab

The quality of mercy’, as Shakespeare called it, is indeed under strain, what with the Supreme Court’s recent decision, upholding the death sentence of Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab. Kasab, surviving captive of the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, sent his mercy petition to the Maharashtra government only to have it rejected three weeks ago.

It was then forwarded to President Pranab Mukherjee: Article 72 of the Constitution gives power to the President of India to commute a convict’s death sentence to life imprisonment.
Kasab’s case casts light on others on death row whose mercy petitions have been pending for years, as they wait in agonising uncertainty, their family’s lives in shambles. World over, the death penalty has been outlawed for the way it makes a society gradually diminished in humanity. Meanwhile, those wronged thirst for justice. Here, The Asian Age looks at a few of those whose life has been hanging by a thread because to let them ‘be or not to be’ remains a vexed issue.

Mohammad Afzal Guru:

Guru was sentenced to death in December 2002 after being convicted “of conspiracy to attack the Parliament of India, waging war against India and murder,” according to Amnesty International. On December 13, 2001, five armed men carried out an attack on the Parliament while it was in session.
The ensuing exchange killed all five assailants, eight policemen and a gardener on the premises. Later, four Kashmiris were arrested, Mohammad Afzal Guru, Syed Abdur Rahman Geelani, an Arabic lecturer in a New Delhi college, Shaukat Hussain Guru and his wife, Afsan Guru, and charged with aiding and abetting the attack.
In 2005, the Supreme Court, upholding the verdict of the Delhi High Court, acquitted Afsan Guru and Geelani and modified the death sentence of Shaukat Hussain, but confirmed Mohammad Afzal Guru’s death sentence.
Later, the Supreme Court dropped a charge of his being a member of a terrorist organisation for lack of evidence. Afzal Guru filed his mercy plea in 2006. Last month, Afzal Guru’s mother, Aisha, died of stomach cancer.

Gurmeet Singh:

Gurmeet Singh massacred 13 members of his family in August 1986 in Pilibhit — he is known as ‘Terah Quatliya’ (murderer of 13).
In 1986, Gurmeet, ostensibly provoked by friend Lakha Singh, killed members of his own family when it was alleged that his newly wed wife, Dalbeer, had had an affair with Lakha. The Supreme Court ruled in September 2005 that he deserved no leniency on the death sentence. Mercy petitions filed in 2007 and 2009 were rejected. Gurmeet’s nephew, Paramjit, who lives about 34 km away from Pipariya Majra village where the incident happened, was 13 years old when the incident occurred, and cannot bear to return to the past.
The crime was harrowing for the survivors who relocated to wipe out memories of the incident. The social stigma prevented Paramjit’s children from getting admission in school. Paramjit took up work as a tractor driver to make a living. “We lost everything because of that man (Gurmeet),” says Paramjit. “He has no right to live.”

Jafar Ali:

Jafar Ali, a resident of Etawah, killed his wife and five daughters ‘in a fit of rage’ in 2002, and was sentenced to death in 2004. His family members have distanced themselves from the case while close friends say that the President should quickly dismiss his mercy plea, pending since 2006. Jafar Ali’s two sons survived the attack and now work in Maharashtra. They have never visited their father at the Fatehgarh jail.
“No one has come to meet this man since the day he came to this jail,” says a jail official. Being abandoned by his family has made him unduly aggressive with other inmates, says the jail official. “His behaviour is not normal. If we keep him in isolation, his aggression increases.”

Dharampal:

His is the oldest petition — pending since 2000. Lodged in Ambala Jail, Dharampal was awarded the death sentence in a case of rape and mercilessly killing five family members of the girl he raped in Haryana.
In 1991, Punam leveled rape charges against Dharampal, a resident of Sonipat, Haryana. He threatened her that if anyone gave evidence against him he would not spare them. Punam deposed, the trial court awarded him 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment. The case went on appeal to the High Court, and Dharampal was released on bail in 1993. A few days after his release, he and his brother killed Punam’s parents, sister and two brothers. The apex court awarded Dharampal the death sentence.

Sonia and Sanjeev:

Sonia, 19, and husband Sanjeev, killed eight of her family members in Haryana in August 2001 after drugging them and clubbing them to death at their farmhouse in Hisar, according to records. Inheritance was possibly the motive. The victims were: her father, Relu Ram Punia, a former Haryana MLA, mother, Krishna, sister Priyanka, stepbrother Sunil, his wife Shakuntala and their three young children.
The killers were awarded the death penalty by the trial court in May 2004 and are lodged in Ambala jail. In 2005, the Punjab and Haryana High Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment but the Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence in 2007.

Balwant Singh Rajoana:

Balwant Singh Rajoana, a member of the Babbar Khalsa, was one of those responsible for the assassination of then Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995 when he was stepping out of the high-security State secretariat. The explosion killed 17 people and Rajoana was sentenced to death in 1996, which the High Court confirmed in October 2010. Spending the last 16 years in prison, Rajoana did not appeal against the trial court order nor file a mercy petition. Of all those prosecuted in the case, only he confessed his guilt.
Rajoana refused to go in for appeal as he had no lawyer, but a PIL was filed in the High Court by an organisation, Lawyers for Human Rights International, seeking stay on his hanging. One of its advocates, Navkiran Singh, who was closely associated with the case, told The Asian Age, “It is the right of every human being to have legal help in the court of law. If Rajoana was executed and later acquitted by a superior court where his case is pending, that would be great injustice.” The PIL was dismissed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, but the hanging was later stayed by the Union government.

There are now 12 mercy petitions from 17 convicts, pending before the President. According to sources in the Union Home Ministry and Rashtrapati Bhavan, in the last four decades 91 mercy petitions were filed before various Presidents. In 31 cases, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, the former President Pratibha Patil doing so in 23 cases. As for Kasab, the Home Ministry, which, along with the Maharashtra government, sent its report to the Rashtrapati Bhavan on the mercy plea, is also determined to “expedite” the issue.