NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday appeared to push the Centre to take a decision on the mercy plea filed on behalf of Balwant Singh Rajoana, convicted and sentenced to death for triggering a bomb blast that killed then Punjab CM Beant Singh in 1995, saying it was impermissible that no decision had been taken even though it was more than a year after it decided to commute the death sentence to life term.
On September 27 last year, the home ministry had informed the Punjab chief secretary that on the occasion of commemoration of 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, it had been decided to commute Rajoana’s death sentence to life term. Rajoana, who had not appealed against the award of death sentence by a trial court in 2007 and its approval by Punjab and Haryana HC in 2010, has moved the SC seeking commutation of death sentence on the ground that he had been in prison for the last 25 years and on death row for the last 13.
A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and R Ramasubramanian told additional solicitor general K M Nataraj that it was untenable for the Centre to say that it has not processed the mercy petitions filed on behalf of Rajoana merely because appeals filed by his co-accused in the Beant Singh killing case were pending in the SC since 2011.
Without explaining the nine-year delay in hearing the appeals by the SC, the bench told Nataraj, “It is obvious that the pendency of appeals filed by co-accused would have no relevance to the processing of proposal for placing mercy petitions before the President for exercise of his powers under Article 72 of the Constitution.” Nataraj sought two weeks to respond after obtaining instructions from the Union government.
As many as 14 petitions seeking mercy for Rajoana were filed in 2012 before the President.