Supreme Court tightens the law to prevent secret hangings

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has tightened the law to prevent the government from executing a mentally ill person like Punjab militant Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar or executing a death row convict in secret without first informing the family as it did in the case of Mohammad Afzal.

Commuting the death sentence of 28 prisoners in various cases, including some members of the slain Sandalwood smuggler Veerappan’s gang, the apex court on Tuesday brought India’s confinement and execution standards for death row convicts on a par with the rest of the world where death penalty is retained on the statute book.

If there is any “undue, unreasonable and prolonged delay” in disposal of the mercy petition, the convict is entitled to approach the court for commuting death sentence to life imprisonment, Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Shiva Kirti Singh said.

Right to life, which guarantees that no person can be deprived of his life or liberty without due procedure, is available to a convict till his last breath even while the noose is being tied to his neck, the three-judge bench said. No prisoner will be held in solitary confinement or in a single cell before his or her clemency plea is rejected by the President, the top court ruled, adding that all legal help would be made available to the prisoners to seek clemency from the governor or the President.

The convicts and their family members will also have to be informed in writing about the fate of their clemency plea, the court said, ruling that death row convicts would get a 14-day window before execution to deal with worldly matters and meet family and friends.

The court a lso made it clear that the authorities will have to inform the family of the execution and facilitate a last meeting before the convict is executed. This will prevent a repeat of last February, when Afzal was hanged in secret without informing even his immediate family. The government had then come in for sharp criticism from human rights activists and antideath penalty activists for depriving the family of one last meeting with the convict.

The court on Tuesday also gave the jail superintendent the right to halt an execution even at the last moment if the prisoner is mentally or physically unfit to be executed and refer the matter to a medical board. The court laid down that the home ministry should draw attention to all supervening events such as mental illness precipitated by years in jail to the President and the Governor to permit them to take a proper call on their pleas for mercy. The court also banned the execution of anyone diagnosed as mentally ill while awaiting death.

“Keeping a convict in suspense while consideration of his mercy petition for many years is certainly an agony….It creates adverse physical conditions and psychological stresses on the convict under sentence of death,” the bench said.

Bhullar, who is awaiting death in connection with the Delhi blast case, will now have his death penalty commuted. The mentally ill convict will be entitled to all medical facilities, the court said.

It also set aside the Bhullar judgement in which another bench had ruled that death row convicts in terror cases would not be entitled to commutation because of the heinous nature of their offences.