No Mercy: Pranab Mukherjee rejected 30 mercy petitions as President

Dev Goswami 

New Delhi July 18, 2017 

Next Tuesday, when Pranab Mukherjee demits the office of the President of India, he will leave behind an in-tray empty of any mercy petitions requesting him to commute a death sentence to life. Over the five years of his presidency, Mukherjee has disposed of 34 mercy pleas (35, if you consider the case of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts financier Yakub Memon who, unsuccessfully, appealed for the presidential pardon twice).

Mukherjee has rejected 30 mercy petitions (31, again, if you include Memon's follow-up plea), and has given fresh leases on lives in four cases. His record of rejecting mercy petitions is unparalleled among his immediate predecessors and, in the history of the Indian republic, is second only to President R Venkatraman, who rejected 45 mercy pleas.* When Mukherjee's successor, who trends suggest will likely be Dalit leader and Bharatiya Janata Party member Ram Nath Kovind, takes office, they will have no pending mercy pleas to act upon, an event that hasn't happened in three presidencies. When Pranab Mukherjee became president on July 25, 2012, he inherited at least 10 pending pleas for mercy, including one from President Kocheril Raman Narayanan's term (1997-2002). In fact, President KR Narayanan and his successor President Abdul Kalam (2002-2007) hold the distinction of sitting on mercy petitions, or what the Law Commission said in a 2015 report, putting the "brakes on the disposal of mercy petitions."

President Pranab Mukharjee

President Narayanan did not act upon a single mercy petition sent to him, while President Kalam disposed of a grand total of two pleas - commuting one, rejecting the other. The ten years of indecision under Narayanan and Kalam were in stark contrast to the term of Pratibha Patil (2007-2012), India's first female president who quickly became known for being one of India's most lenient head of state. Patil's term saw 34 commutations and five rejections. Only India's first two presidents (Rajendra Prasad with 180 commutations and Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan with 57) accepted more mercy petitions than she did.

President Pranab Mukharjee

RUBBER STAMP?

Under the Indian constitution, the president acts on the advice of the executive, i.e. the prime minister and his cabinet. And so, the argument has often been made that a president's decision - on mercy petitions or otherwise - should be seen in context of the political dispensation in power. However, the 20 years of presidents Mukherjee, Patil, Kalam and Narayanan have been divided almost equally between governments led by the Congress (2004-2014) and the BJP (1998-2004; 2014-now). Furthermore, the constitution does not set a time frame in which the president must act upon a mercy plea, though the Supreme Court has indirectly set some restrictions by ruling that an inordinate delay in settling a mercy petition could be grounds for commuting a death sentence altogether.

President Pratibha Patil

This allows presidents to express dissent by refusing to act on a mercy petition, a trend seen during the Narayanan and Kalam years. There have also been precedents, though rare, of presidents going against government advice - just this year, President Mukherjee commuted to life the death sentences of four men, going against the Centre's recommendation. An analysis of denials (or commutations) of mercy pleas suggests that that the person occupying the president's chair does matter, even though the Rashtrapati Bhavan has sought to argue otherwise in the past, for example, in 2012, when it released a statement on behalf of Pratibha Patil to convey essentially that the president acts on behalf of the government and not out of her own will. The Law Commission in its 2015 report too noted the influence a president has on deciding mercy petitions, saying, "A perusal of the chart of mercy petitions disposed by Presidents suggests that a death-row convict's fate in matters of life and death may not only depend on the ideology and views of the government of the day but also on the personal views and belief systems of the President."

President Kalam acted upon just two mercy petitions, rejecting one, accepting the other

HOW PRESIDENTS HAVE ACTED ON MERCY PLEAS

Based on data collated by the Law Commission, here's how India's presidents have dealt with mercy petitions:

• Rajendra Prasad accepted 180 mercy pleas and rejected just one.
• Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan allowed 57 mercy petitions while rejecting none.
• Zakir Hussain did not send a single man to the gallow, accepting 22 mercy pleas.
• VV Giri too did not reject a mercy petition, and accepted three pleas.
• Fakrudhin Ali Ahmed and N Sanjeeva Reddy did not deal with any mercy petitions in their tenures.
• Zail Singh rejected 30 mercy petitions, allowing just two.
• R Venkatraman holds the record of rejecting the highest number of mercy pleas - 45. He allowed five petitions.
• SD Sharma did not hand out a single commutation, rejecting 18 pleas for mercy.
• KR Narayanan kept all mercy petitions pending.
• APJ Kalam ruled on just two pleas, rejecting one and accepting the other.
• Pratibha Patil commuted 34 mercy petitions and rejected five.
• Pranab Mukherjee rejected 30 mercy petitions and allowed four.

HOW MERCY PETITIONS ARE DECIDED

Once the Supreme Court gives in its final ruling in a death penalty case, a convict on the death row can approach the president directly, via prison officials, via the Union Home Ministry or via the governor of the state where he/she is incarcerated. The president then seeks the opinion of the Union cabinet, which is provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The president might, in some cases, send the MHA's recommendation back for further clarifications. The Home Ministry may also recall its recommendation in order to provide a fresh opinion. Once the MHA submits a recommendation, the President will then accordingly decide upon a mercy petition. However, there is no set time frame within which a President must act.

President K.P. Narayan

* The numbers in this article are based on data collated by the Law Commission in its 2015 report. However, in a hallmark of Indian bureaucratic record keeping, exact figures on the mercy petitions rejected or allowed by India's first few presidents aren't easily available. Even the Law Commission in its report noted that the figures it was able to collate were based on empirical verification from the archives which may not be complete.

(Graphics: Newsflicks; Chart: Ekta Handa)

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/president-pranab-mukherjee-mercy-petitions-1025001-2017-07-18 (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Rights watchdog slams large number of death sentences, says they have failed to curb crime

Satya Prakash, Hindustan Times, New Delhi | Updated: Sep 01, 2014 08:36 IST President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected 97% of the mercy petitions since assuming the top office in 2012, a human rights watch group has said, stressing that death penalty has failed to act as a deterrent in the country. Mukherjee, who assumed office on July 25, 2012, considered 23 mercy pleas involving 31 death-row convicts out of which only one was granted mercy as on August 31, 2014, the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) said in its report titled 'India: Death penalty has no deterrence'. The Delhi-based ACHR is a non-governmental organisation engaged in protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the Asian region. Mukherjee's decisions are in sharp contrast to those of his predecessor Pratibha Patil, who granted a record 30 pardons, over 90 per cent of India's total death sentences pardoned ever. She rejected only two mercy pleas during her tenure. Mostly awarded in murder cases, death penalty is now also given to repeat offenders in rape cases. ACHR Director Suhas Chakma, however, said that high number of death penalty has not brought down crime rate. "The empirical evidence of the government of India, however, establishes that death penalty does not act as deterrent," said Chakma, who is also coordinator of the national campaign for abolition of death penalty in India. The ACHR said the government should "amend all the laws that provide death penalty" and replace the same with life imprisonment. Citing National Crimes Records Bureau (NCRB) data, the ACHR report stated that from 2001 to 2012, death sentence of 1,552 convicts were confirmed while the death sentences for 4,382 convicts were commuted to life imprisonment. "Death penalty can never be a substitute to prevention, effective and prompt investigation and speedy justice delivery system against crimes on which the government of India has failed," Chakma said. On the contrary, the report said, there was a drastic fall in murder cases following a considerable reduction in executions since 1982 when the Supreme Court propounded the "rarest of the rare doctrine" for awarding death penalty. Even inclusion of death penalty for repeat offenders of rape has not reduced non-homicidal offences such as rape, the report added. On April 4, 2014, a sessions court in Mumbai became the first in the country to impose death penalty on three repeat offenders of rape under the new Section 376E of the IPC in the infamous Shakti Mill rape case. However, statistics provided by Mumbai police showed that 135 rape cases were reported from April to 15 June 2014 i.e., about 2 rape cases daily, the report said. Similarly, the award of death penalty to four adult accused found guilty of rape and murder in the Delhi gang-rape and murder too failed to act as a deterrent. According to Delhi police data, 616 rape cases were registered in Delhi from January 1, 2014 to April 30, 2014, an average of six cases per day. Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/rights-watchdog-slams-large-number-of-death-sentences-says-they-have-failed-to-curb-crime/article1-1258858.aspx [last accessed 06.02.2015]

President Pranab clears all 7 pending mercy plea cases

Himanshi Dhawan & Vishwa Mohan, TNN Apr 4, 2013, 04.32AM IST

 

NEW DELHI: Speculation mounted on Wednesday about the fate of nine people convicted for heinous crimes amid indications that President Pranab Mukherjee had upheld execution in five cases while commuting death sentence to life term in two others. Sources said that the President used his powers under Article 72 of the Constitution to dispose of the mercy petitions of nine people convicted in seven heinous crimes. However, the details of individual cases could not be ascertained. The home ministry had recommended rejection of mercy pleas in five cases and left two cases open for commutation of death sentence to life imprisonment with a rider that the life term should mean jail for the entire life of the convict and not just 20 years or 14 years in prison. Sources said that the President does not have any mercy petition pending before him now.

Though the case-wise recommendation for convicts was not known as both the home ministry and President House did not reply to repeated questions, the seven cases on the President's desk related to multiple murders, including one in which a convict who was out on bail on rape charge had killed five members of the victim's family. Among the cases that are reported to have been disposed of include the longest pending case of Gurmeet Singh of Uttar Pradesh who was convicted for killing 13 members of a family on August 17, 1986. The others cases are of Suresh and Ramji, also from UP, who were convicted for killing five members of their brother's family and Dharampal from Haryana who had murdered five members of the family of a girl he had raped in 1993. He had murdered the family while on bail in the rape case.

The other cases are of Sonia, daughter of a former Haryana MLA, and her husband Sanjeev, who drugged and killed eight of her family members in Hisar in 2001, including her parents. Sunder Singh from Uttarakhand was convicted for rape and murder on June 30, 1989; Jafar Ali from Uttar Pradesh was convicted for killing wife and five daughter in 2002 and Praveen Kumar of Karnataka was convicted for killing four members of a family on February 23, 1994. The mercy files, which have been pending for years while moving to and fro between the President House and the home ministry, has seen an unprecedented movement of late, resulting in two quick executions (Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru) within less than three months.

Mukherjee had rejected the mercy plea of Kasab on November 5 and of Afzal on February 3. So far, the President has disposed off eight death row convicts in five cases. Mukherjee has also rejected the mercy petitions of Saibanna Ningappa Natikar (Karnataka: convicted for killing wife and daughter) and mercy petitions of slain brigand Veerappan's associates Gnanaprakash, Simon, 'Meesai' Madaian and Pilavendran, who were sentenced to death for killing 22 police personnel in 1993. However, the mercy petition of Atbir (Delhi), who was convicted for murder of his step-mother, step-sister and step-brother over property, was commuted to life imprisonment by the President.

Very few of the death penalty cases, however, reach the President House every year. Even during the tenure of the then President Pratibha Patil, death penalties of 35 convicts were commuted to life imprisonment between 2007 and 2012. Patil had rejected mercy pleas in three cases, comprising five convicts.

Source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-04-04/india/38277382_1_mercy-petition-saibanna-ningappa-natikar-atbir accessed 5th April 2013

President Pratibha Patil gives life to dead man (President Pratibha Patil had commuted the death sentences of 35 convicts to life imprisonment so far during her term as President.)

R Uday Kumar & Ravi Uppar,TNN | Jun 23, 2012, 04.25AM IST BELGAUM (KARNAKATA): A day after TOI reported that President Pratibha Patil had commuted the death sentences of 35 convicts to life in prison, it came to light on Friday that one of the beneficiaries of her mercy died almost five years ago. Bandu Tidke's sentence for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl came from the President's office on June 2. It has raised doubts about whether the clemency decisions - for many convicted of murder and rape - on the advice of the Union home ministry were based on correct information or taken in haste. In Tidke's case, either the state jail officials or Karnataka's home department and subsequently the Union home ministry had not informed the President's office about his death on October 18, 2007. Tidke was 31 years old and HIV-positive. Sources in the state prisons department said Tidke's file had been moved to the Centre two to three years ago. Prisons minister A Narayanaswamy, however, said, "It takes some time for the President to consider after a file is moved. I think the file in this case was moved when the convict was alive." Tidke was arrested for rape and murder in 2002. In 2005, he was given the death sentence by the Bagalkot district court. Since November 30, 2005, he was lodged in the Hindalga Jail in Belgaum. According to police files, Tidke, a sugarcane cutter from Beed district in Maharashtra, migrated in 2002 to Bagalkot in Karnataka where he posed as a swamiji and stayed at a local mutt. That year, he dragged a 16-year-old girl from a nearby school to his room, raped and murdered her. He left the body there and escaped to Shirdi where he was arrested. Tidke appealed in the high court in 2006 but the court turned down his plea. Justices S R Bannurmath and N Ananda described him "like a devil in the garb of a swami". He then sent a mercy plea to the President. Five years too late 2002: Bandu Baburao Tidke, a sugarcane cutter from Beed district of Maharashtra migrates to Bagalkot in Karnataka. Dresses up like a swamiji and lives in a mutt. Drags a 16-year-old schoolgirl to the mutt, rapes and murders her. Flees to Shirdi where he is arrested. 2005: Bagalkot court sentences Tidke to death. Sent to Hindalga Jail in Belgaum. 2006: Tidke appeals to high court against death sentence, but court turns petition. Tidke found to be HIV positive. October 18, 2007: Tidke dies in Belgaum government hospital. June 2, 2012: President Pratibha Patil commutes long-dead Tidke's death sentence to life term. [Source: Times of India; accessed on 23rd June 2012 See at http://sp.m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/14349473.cms]