Published: Tuesday, Jun 29, 2010, 1:43 IST
By Harish Gupta | Place: New Delhi | Agency: DNA
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_president-patil-set-to-commute-third-death-sentence_1402676
Cases of mercy petitions of condemned prisoners, gathering dust for years, are finally seeing some movement.
After clearing two files involving eight convicts and commuting their death sentence, president Pratibha Patil is in the process of clearing a third long-pending case as well.
It is authoritatively learnt that in the third case too, the president has commuted the death sentence. In fact, she will become the first Indian head of the state in 15 years to clear three files of condemned prisoners.
Her immediate predecessor APJ Abdul Kalam cleared two files during his five-year term while the late KR Narayanan kept all such cases pending during his time in office.
An official spokesperson of the Rashtrapati Bhavan and officer on special duty to the president, Archana Datta, denied reports that Patil’s religious beliefs were coming in the way of taking decisions in such cases.
She also clarified that the file relating to Afzal Guru had not come to the president so far; she also said it is not mandatory that such decisions are taken in chronological order.
However, she maintained that “the president is guided by the aid and advice of the government”.
With the file clearances gathering speed, it is clear that process may be put on the fast track. There are 21 files pending with the president and six with the Union home ministry.
Though no one in the government was willing to confirm this, but it is said that in commuting the death of eight persons in two murder cases, the decision was guided by compassion rather than by religious beliefs.
All the eight members facing death by hanging were involved in the murder of their immediate family members and were in jail for more than 20 years.
Their clemency petitions were pending for nearly ten years. Secondly, the family members of even those who were killed by the convicts had jointly sought clemency for them.
