Afzal Guru mercy petition may come up only in 2011

Union home minister P Chidambaram is buying time on the Afzal Guru case.

According to sources in the Union home ministry, Chidambaram has decided that he will deal with one mercy petition a month, starting July.

Going by this formula, the fate of Afzal, convicted in the Parliament attack case of 2001, looks likely to be decided only in 2011. This is considering that his serial number is 22, and that he will have to wait for almost two more years before his mercy petition is formally taken up for review.

The government has 28 mercy petitions pending with it, including those dating back to the 1990s, like that of the assassins of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The Supreme Court had sentenced Afzal to death on August 4, 2005. He filed a mercy petition in 2006, which was received by the then president APJ Abdul Kalam on October 4, 2006, and forwarded to the home ministry.

The procedure on these petitions is that the home ministry consults the government of the state where the crime took place, formulates its opinion and submits the case back to the president.

There has been much criticism over the UPA government’s handling of the Afzal case; it has been alleged that the petition is being kept under wraps for political reasons. In that context, Chidambaram’s plan of taking up one petition a month serial-wise is being viewed as a time-buying ploy, to avoid taking a decision in this controversial case.

Apart from the three sentenced to death in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, three convicted in Pune’s Rathi multiple-murder case have been waiting for a decision on their petitions since 1999.
The delay in decision-making on the mercy petitions is said to be largely due to the absence of any guidelines and timeframe to deal with such cases. The president exercises his/her powers under Article 72 of the constitution to grant pardon or commute death sentence of a convict.

Senior home ministry officials however feel that no guidelines can be framed in such cases. “The powers under Article 72 are of the widest amplitude, and can contemplate myriad kinds and categories of cases with varying facts and situations,” they said.

In normal course, the home ministry follows certain parameters while formulating views on a mercy petition. These include personality of the accused, the age and sex, circumstances of the case, conduct of the offender, medical abnormality falling short of legal insanity.
According to home ministry records, the president had rejected seven mercy petitions and commuted sentence in two cases during 1995-2006. In 1985-1994, 41 petitions were rejected while four sentences were commuted. In the 1975-84 period, 121 petitions were rejected and 52 sentences were commuted. And in 1965-74, 491 out of the 543 mercy petitions filed were rejected.