M A I N   N E W S

3 Rajiv killers escape gallows
SC commutes death to life term
R Sedhuraman
Legal Correspondent

Guru’s hanging unjustified They (Centre) never asked us, they did not tell us, they just hanged him (Afzal Guru)...It was absolutely unjustified Farooq Abdullah, nc president

New Delhi, February 18
The Supreme Court today reduced to life sentence the death penalty awarded to three convicts, Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan, for their role in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, citing the 11-year delay in the disposal of their mercy pleas.

Extensively quoting from their petitions to authorities seeking expeditious disposal of their mercy petitions, a Bench headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam noted that life in jail had become a living death for them.

In one such communication, Murugan had said he was a moving dead body “with the rope dangling in front my eyes...I request (for) justice, not mercy.”

Nevertheless, the Bench clarified that there was no need for such convicts to prove their sufferings in jail to justify their plea for commuting their death penalty to life sentence.

The apex court rejected the government’s stand that they had failed to make out a case on the basis of their agony. The Supreme Court clarified that the life sentence of the three convicts would be subject to remissions granted by the state government under Section 432 of the CrPC.