President rejects mercy pleas of Nithari killer, 5 others

NEW DELHI: It's the gallows for Nithari serial killer Surinder Koli and five other death row convicts with President Pranab Mukherjee rejecting their mercy petitions as advised by the home ministry. The files relating to the five mercy pleas, one of which involves two sisters, were cleared by the President and returned to the home ministry last week.

Sources indicated that the home ministry has already written to the states concerned — Maharashtra (from where two petitions relating to three convicts were received), UP, Madhya Pradesh and Assam (one case each) — to set in motion the process of execution of the death row convicts.

Apart from Koli, awarded death in the bone-chilling case of abduction, abuse and murder of several minors in Noida's Nithari village, the others whose clemency pleas were rejected are Renukabai and Seema, two sisters from Maharashtra convicted of kidnapping and brutally murdering several children; Rajendra Prahladrao Wasnik of Maharashtra, convicted of raping and murdering a minor girl; Jagdish of Madhya Pradesh who killed his wife and five children; and Holiram Bordoloi of Assam, who had burnt two people and hacked another to death in public in 1996.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh had recommended to the President on June 18 to reject the mercy petitions in all five cases.

Though the six death row convicts may still challenge the rejection of their mercy petition, the gap of three years and less between upholding of death sentence by the apex court and scrapping of clemency plea in three cases may not qualify for relief.

The Supreme Court had in February this year commuted the death sentences of 15 death row convicts to life imprisonment on grounds of inordinate delay — which it did not quantify, though in the relevant cases it ranged from 7 to 11 years — and mental illness.

Incidentally, the government has decided to file a curative petition in the Supreme Court seeking reconsideration of the February order.

Koli, in any case, may have little room for judicial reprieve on grounds of delay as his death sentence was confirmed only in 2011. The same fate may await Wasnik, whose death sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2012, and Jagdish, whose capital punishment was upheld in 2009.

As for the other cases, the death penalty for the two sisters was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2006 and that Holiram Bordoloi in 2005. It will be interestingly to see whether this is viewed as "inordinate" delay on part of the Executive in deciding their mercy pleas.