President Pranab Mukherjee commutes death sentence of a convict to life imprisonment

NEW DELHI: After rejecting mercy petitions of 22 convicts on death row, President Pranab Mukherjee recently commuted the death sentence of a convict to life imprisonment.

Man Bahadur Deewan, alias Tote Deewan, was convicted for killing his wife Gauri and two minor sons, Rajib and Kajib, in September 2002 at a village in Dibrugarh district of Assam. He later killed another inmate of the house Bidhimaya and surrendered before the police.

This is one of the rare cases where Mukherjee has commuted the death sentence after taking over in 2012.

The death sentence of 1993 blast convict Yakub Menon, whose mercy petition was rejected by the president, had been stayed by the Supreme Court. Nithari serial rape and murder convict Surender Koli’s mercy petition, too, was rejected by Mukherjee but he got relief from SC.

In Deewan’s case, Mukherjee is believed to have relied upon the opinion of MHA that had advised him to take a lenient view of the case. MHA is learnt to have advised Mukherjee that Deewan is from a poor background and murdered his wife, sons and a neighbour due to abject poverty and unemployment.