NEW DELHI: Can a High Court commute a death sentence even after the President rejects the mercy petition and the Supreme Court upholds the sentence?
A ticklish question of law has been raised by the Centre in a petition before the Apex Court which on Wednesday issued notice and asked the Attorney General to assist it.
“The decision of the Governor/President being subjected to judicial review by the High Court would otherwise add an extra stage to the process, before the final stage of judicial review by this hon’ble Court,… so as to shorten the period when the long process of the law and Constitution takes its course,” the Centre has pleaded.
The Delhi High Court had on June 28 quashed the President’s order rejecting the mercy petition and commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment in a case of a brutal murder of five members of a scra[e dealer’s family, including two minors, with knife and axe in Cher village of Chhattisgarh on 26.11.2004 in the course of a dacoity.
The trial court had sentenced to death two persons in February 2008, though the Chhattisgarh High Court reversed it in case of one being a juvenile while rejecting appeal of one Sonu Sardar in 2012. The Supreme Court also upheld the death sentence.
His mercy petitions were rejected by the Chhattisgarh governor in April 2013 and by the President in May 2015. He, however, moved Delhi High Court in February 2015 to commute his death sentence. The High Court commuted it to life imprisonment on the ground that the mercy decision was vitiated because of improper exercise of power on irrelevant considerations.
