From Our Correspondent
GUWAHATI: It was a breather of sort for a death row convict from Assam, Mahendra Nath Das when a Division Bench of Supreme Court comprising Justice A K Patnaik and Justice Swatanter Kumar on Thursday referred his petition seeking conversion of his death sentence to life imprisonment to the Chief Justice of India with a request for tagging similar cases to be heard by one particular Bench of the court.
The standing counsel of Assam Government in Supreme Court Abhijit Roy informed over phone from New Delhi that during the course of argument, it was pointed out to the court that one more similar case of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar where also the issue is delay in disposal of mercy petition by the President of India was pending before another Bench of the court.
The court after taking note of the argument decided to refer the matter to the Chief Justice of India asking whether these similar cases can be tagged together and heard by one particular Bench.
Government of India was represented in the case by Solicitor General of India R S Nariman while the petitioner was represented by senior advocate Shyam Dewan.
The petitioner Mahendra Nath Das had moved the Supreme Court after the Gauhati High Court had earlier turned down a writ petition filed by his mother to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment on the plea that he had been kept confined in the death row for years due to delay in disposal of his mercy petition by the President of India.
Das, was awarded a death sentence by the Kamrup Sessions Court way back in August 1997 for the brutal murder of one Hara Kanta Das at Fancy Bazar in Guwahati on 24 April 1996.
Immediately after committing the crime Das had surrendered before the police along with the murder weapon (a machete) and the severed head of the victim dangling from his hand.
The death sentence was later confirmed by the High Court in February 1998 and subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court in May 1999.
But Das has been waiting for the execution of the death sentence for the past 14 years, after a mercy petition he sent to the President in June 1999 was rejected only in May, 2011.
But he soon obtained an interim stay order from the Gauhati High Court, which on June 17, 2011 served notices on the state and union government as to why it took more than 12 years to dispose of the convict’s mercy petition.