The Supreme Court on Wednesday commuted to life imprisonment the death penalty awarded to a man for murder as the President’s office took too long to reject his mercy plea.
The mercy petition of M.N. Das, sentenced to death for beheading a man, was rejected 11 years after he filed it.
Das murdered a man in Assam in 1990. While on bail, he beheaded one Harakanta Das at Fancy Bazar in Assam and surrendered with the victim’s head on April 24, 1996.
In 1997, the sessions court sentenced him to death. The Gauhati high court subsequently upheld the conviction and sentence in 1998, and the Supreme Court in 1999.