How the law takes its own course

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A study on the working of the death penalty has lighted up the tortuous path the law takes and the impact it has on the lives of the poor who get caught in its tentacles.

The pioneering research project undertaken by a group at the National Law University, Delhi, led by Assistant Professor Anup Surendranath, has resulted in the mining of much valuable data on the social and economic aspects of the death penalty and the vagaries of the justice system.

It has also led to the establishment of a Centre on the Death Penalty, whose sphere of activity extends beyond research to litigation and advocacy. At present it represents 40 death row prisoners. Its public affairs team promotes discussion on the death penalty issue outside the realm of law.

Members of the group interviewed 373 of 385 persons in the death row. They also traced family members of the convicts and talked to them. They could not meet 12 condemned prisoners as the authorities denied access to them.

While collecting data, the group noticed several systemic problems that dog the process of criminal investigation and justice delivery. Torture to extort confession was common. Failure to ratify the UN Convention against Torture, which India signed in 1997, virtually sanctions continuance of the medieval practice.

The group found that social and economic factors were at play in the breeding of crime. More than two-fifths of the death row prisoners belonged to socially disadvantaged sections and three-fourths were economically vulnerable. While the Constitution promises equality before law the long and costly process involved effectively denies it to the poor.

Add to it the vagaries of the legal process. The study revealed a wide gap between the approaches of the lowest and highest levels of the judiciary to sentencing. In cases which attract the death penalty less than five per cent of the trial court convictions met with the apex court’s approval. The higher courts set aside the conviction and acquitted the convicts in about 30 per cent of the cases and gave reduced sentences in the remaining cases.

More than 40 years ago the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty should be awarded only in “the rarest of rare” cases. All too often courts have differed in their assessment of whether or not a case falls in the “rarest of rare” category.

Instances of the same court making conflicting assessments are also on record. A Supreme Court bench sent to the gallows a man who was found guilty of kidnapping a boy for ransom, saying it was a “rarest of rate” case. Earlier it had reduced the death penalty the lower court had awarded to a man who killed his wife and daughter while on parole after being convicted on a charge of raping the daughter, holding the case was not of the “rarest of rare” kind.

The most agonising part of the legal process is the prolonged period of uncertainty through which a death row inmate passes as he awaits the outcome of his plea for mercy. There have been occasions when this period extended beyond two decades. It is a period of acute mental stress as he remains trapped between hope and death.

While the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional validity of the death penalty, the Law Commission, in a report last September, broke with past recommendations and proposed that the country move towards restricting its use to terrorism cases, where it was necessary for reasons of national security.

The growing national movement for abolition of the death penalty suffered a setback two years ago when the national outrage over a gang rape in Delhi prompted the government to toughen the law relating to grave sexual offences.

In justification of its new recommendation, the Law Commission pointed out that the murder rate had fallen from 4.6 per 100,000 people in 1992 to 2.7 per 100,000 in 2013. The rate of executions too had declined. National Crime Records Bureau’s figures indicated that the average number of persons sentenced to death now stood at 129 a year.

The police forces’ bias against the minorities is well-known. The rise of terrorism has led to the spread of prejudice to other sections too. In confirming the death penalty awarded to Afzal Guru, one of the accused in the Parliament attack case, the Supreme Court had observed that “the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender”. Many have taken exception to this observation, viewing it as proof of deviation from the standard judicial approach.  -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 10, 2016.

Demons do not dance alone

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Mutual demonisation has long been a part of the political charade of Indian and Pakistani players, particularly communally motivated elements. When their caricatures of each other come alive, the demons dance in tandem, not alone, as the lyric says.

On April 26 a group of convicts in a Lahore jail attacked and fatally injured 49-year-old Sarabjit Singh, an Indian undergoing life term in two cases. Pakistan said he was injured in a scuffle but unofficial reports suggested the attack was an act of reprisal for the execution of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri, sentenced to death in the Parliament attack case.

Pakistan refused Indian requests to send Sarabjit Singh home for treatment but allowed relatives to visit him in hospital as he awaited death. His body, handed over to the family, was flown to India for the last rites.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), in a statement, accused the jail authorities of compromising Sarabjit Singh’s security. Not even the most naïve person could believe the assault could be executed without the knowledge and support of prison guards and the authorities, it said.

“Those in Pakistan who take pride in their vengefulness must feel some shame today, if they are capable of that,” it added. “All those elements in India who are no less vengeful, intolerant and fond of jingoism than their Pakistani counterparts would no doubt write their own script now.”

Even before Sarabjit Singh’s body was cremated in his village on Friday, an Indian prisoner in a Jammu jail attacked and critically wounded Sanaullah Haq, a 64-year-old Pakistani convict, undergoing life term there. Jail officials said the attack followed a petty quarrel but Pakistani officials referred to it as an act of revenge.

India turned down Pakistan’s request to send Sanaullah Haq home for treatment but allowed officials of its high commission to visit him at the Chandigarh medical institute where he was admitted.

Ironically, the attack on Sarabjit Singh took place the day a panel comprising five retired judges – three from Pakistan and two from India — began visits to Pakistani jails to look into the condition of Indian prisoners as part of a bilateral effort.  Pakistani authorities presented before it 535 Indian prisoners lodged in three jails. They included 483 fishermen, 11 of them juveniles.   

According to official sources in New Delhi, there are about 7,300 foreigners in Indian jails. Of them, only about 300 are Pakistanis. They include 260 fishermen.

The troubled relations between India and Pakistan and the ire aroused by the terror charges against some render prisoners belonging to one vulnerable to attacks in the other. The prolonged detention of prisoners, including fishermen who ended up in jails only because their boats strayed into the other country’s territorial waters, testifies to the inconsiderate handling of issues by officials on both sides.

The two countries are believed to be still holding several persons taken into custody during the 1965 and 1971 wars, although they do not publicly acknowledge this. Chuck Yeager, an American air force officer stated in his autobiography, published in 1984, that while on assignment in Pakistan he had seen Indian fighter pilots who had been shot down during the 1971 war.

In March 2011, at a meeting at the Home Secretary level, the two countries agreed to release civilian prisoners and fishermen who had served their jail term and whose nationality had been confirmed by the respective governments.  A few months later they exchanged lists of prisoners in each other’s custody. A bilateral mechanism has been created to update the lists periodically.

Both Sarabjtit Singh and Sanaullah Haq were convicted on terrorism charges and spent more than two decades in prison. This is a much longer period than what those given life terms ordinarily spend in jail in the two countries. Although each government claimed its convicted national was an innocent civilian who had inadvertently crossed the border, the possibility that the two were intelligence operatives cannot be ruled out.

In January, an Indian prisoner, Chambail Singh, was killed in a Pakistani jail. His body was sent to India only after two months, and that too without an autopsy report.  Sarabjit Singh’s body too came without an autopsy report. Indian doctors who conducted a second autopsy found that the internal organs had been removed.

If only the two governments learn to respect the human rights of each othe’s prisoners there will be less scope for jingoists of the two sides to cry for blood. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 7, 2013,

Quality of mercy is strained

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today
Political and communal passions often run high in India. Since some parties draw sustenance from communal ideologies it is not always easy to distinguish between political sentiments and communal feelings. Their combined impact is straining the quality of mercy.

The constitution vests in the president and the governors of states the power to grant pardon or commute the sentence of a person convicted of any offence. The provision is in accord with the universally recognised principle of executive clemency, which allows justice to be tempered with mercy.

In the 1960s, in a celebrated case, the Governor of Maharashtra pardoned a navy commander, KM Nanavati, who was sentenced to life for killing his wife’s lover, after he had spent only three years in jail. He was a highly decorated officer and a campaign by a popular tabloid which played up the murder as a crime of passion earned him the sympathy of the middle class.

Nanavati was a Parsi and the deceased a Sindhi, and organisations of the two communities openly took sides. In the event, the government acted only after the deceased’s family stated in writing that it had forgiven Nanavati. It also granted pardon, along with Nanavati, to a Sindhi freedom fighter who had been convicted in another case.

Since then, the Supreme Court has laid down guidelines with regard to grant of pardon. In 1980, a constitution bench ruled that the president and the governors cannot exercise the right of pardon arbitrarily. Also, since they act on the advice of the council of ministers, grant of pardon was an executive action and, therefore, subject to judicial review.

In the USA, the highest court has drawn a distinction between judicial power and executive power. “Executive clemency exists to afford relief from undue harshness or evident mistake in the operation or the enforcement of the criminal law,” Chief Justice William Taft said in a judgement. “The administration of justice by the courts is not necessarily always wise or certainly considerate of circumstances which may properly mitigate guilt.”

The thought that courts are not infallible is hard to come by in Indian judicial pronouncements. As things now stand, the last word on grant of pardon rests with the judiciary. The courts can upset the decision of the president or the governor on such grounds as acting without the advice of the council of ministers or on extraneous considerations, transgressing jurisdiction and lack of application of mind.

While the executive and the judiciary are sworn to act without fear or favour, it is unreasonable to expect them to immunise themselves totally against the pressure of public opinion, informed or otherwise. In awarding Afzal Guru the death sentence in the parliament attack case, the apex court had said in so many words that this was necessary to satisfy the collective conscience of the society in an incident which had shaken the entire nation.

The event certainly had shaken the nation but what the capital punishment, which the government carried out secretly in February, satisfied was not the society’s desire for justice but the revanchist sentiments of political elements with a communal agenda wrapped in pseudo-nationalism. They were back in action last week after Press Council of India Chairman Markandey Katju, who is a former Supreme Court judge, called for grant of pardon to Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, whom the apex court gave a five-year jail term under the Arms Act.

The case against Dutt arose out of his contacts with some of those involved in the Mumbai serial blasts of 1993 in which more than 250 persons were killed. Katju asked that Dutt be pardoned considering his contribution as an actor and his charitable work, factors which modern states generally take into account in deciding such matters. He also pointed out that Dutt had expressed remorse and suffered enough during the past two decades.

Dutt was in prison for a year and a half in the preliminary stages of the case and has to spend three-and-a-half years more in jail in terms of the apex court verdict. Sensing that public opinion in his case is divided, he said he would go to prison and not seek pardon.

The real issue is not the fate of an individual who committed a breach of the law but that of the society which appears to be at the mercy of atavist elements which will not allow justice to be tempered with mercy.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 2, 2013.

Hanging puts the clock back

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Whichever way one looks at it, the secret hanging of Afzal Guru, the lone convict in the parliament attack case, who was under the shadow of the gallows for more than a decade, is a sad commentary on Indian democracy.

While people swayed by right-wing groups, which have been baying for blood, applauded the action, civil society activists questioned the fairness of the trial, the timing of the hanging and the message that it sends out.

The case was a sequel to the December 1999 attack on Parliament House by five gunmen, said to be Pakistanis. All of them were killed by security personnel, who lost five men in the action. Four civilians were also killed but none of about 100 parliamentarians who were in the building was hurt. A massive military build-up on both sides of the India-Pakistan border followed, raising fears of a nuclear conflict.

According to the investigators, the attack was plotted by Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Pakistan-based Kashmiri outfit, whose founder, Maulana Masood Azhar, is among the 20 persons whose names figure in dossiers New Delhi has given to Islamabad. Pakistan says the evidence India has provided is not sufficient to prosecute them.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which habitually takes a hard line on India-Pakistan relations while in the opposition, has been particularly hawkish on the Parliament attack case. The attack had taken place when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was in power. Azhar was one of the hardcore militants its government had released from prison earlier to secure the safe return of the passengers of an Indian plane which was hijacked after it took off from Kathmandu.

Afzal Guru was a Kashmiri militant who had surrendered to the security forces. Later he moved from the valley to Delhi and was engaged in business there. The charge against him was that he had conspired with the attackers and helped them to get arms and shelter. He claimed he was framed.

He did not get a counsel of his choice to represent him in the trial court. All six lawyers whose names he had proposed refused his brief, some of them out of fear. He dispensed with the services of the court-appointed lawyer, saying he was not presenting his case fully.

While disposing of Afzal Guru’s appeal against his conviction, the Supreme Court conceded there was no direct evidence to show he belonged to any terrorist group or was a party to any criminal conspiracy. However, it held, circumstantial evidence unerringly pointed to his collaboration with the attackers. It said the collective conscience of the society would only be satisfied if capital punishment was awarded.

Presidents APJ Abdul Kalam and Pratibha Patil left office without taking any decision on the mercy petition filed by Afzal Guru’s wife Tabasum. Pranab Mukherjee, who took office six months ago, rejected the mercy plea on February 3 clearing the way for the hanging.

Afzal Guru is the second person to be hanged in three months, the first being Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani gunman who was captured alive during the 2008 Mumbai terror attack. As in the case of Kasab, the execution procedures were completed in utter secrecy and the body buried in the jail compound.

Afzal Guru’s family and lawyer were not informed about the date of his execution. Kashmir was placed under curfew, cyber links were cut and secessionist leaders placed under restraint to check protests. Still there were protests, some of them violent, and the valley observed three-day mourning.

Congress party spokesman Rashid Alvi said the hanging sent a tough message to the world that India would not tolerate terrorism. He appeared to be oblivious of the negative message implied in the short-circuiting of established procedures.

Human rights groups in the country and abroad were sharp in their criticism. “The secret, shameful and surreptitious manner (of the hanging) is most unbecoming of a democracy,” said Yug Mohit Chaudhry, lawyer and campaigner against death penalty.

Many analysts saw Afzal Guru’s execution, rejecting calls for reprieve, as an attempt by the ruling Congress to take the wind out of the BJP’s sails ahead of parliament’s budget session beginning this month and the general election due next year. They noted that Kasab was hanged just before the last session.

“It’s extremely tragic if Indian democracy is going to survive on executing someone or the other before every parliament session,” said Vrinda Grover, a prominent lawyer and activist.

Clearly the hanging has put the clock back.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, February 12, 2013

An Appeal to the nation's conscience from the Death Row

Arputham Kuyildasan of Jolarpettai, mother of A. G. Perarivalan (picture on the right), who was convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and has been under the shadow of the gallows for many years, was in Thiruvananthapuram recently to present before the public her son’s case for mercy.

Speaking at the Kesari Memorial Hall, she said the members of her family were followers of EVR’s Dravida Kazhagam. Perarivalan, who had a diploma in Electronics and Communications Engineering, was working with the DK paper Viduthalai when he was arrested on June 11, 1991. He was actually handed over to the CBI investigators by his parents on learning that they were looking for him in connection with the case. That was before his 19th birthday.

In the 20 years he has spent in jail, Perarivalan has acquired new educational qualifications.

Earlier Arputham had called on Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer at Kochi.



Arputham Kuyildasan, mother of Rajiv Gandhi assassination convict Perarivalan, with former Supreme Court judge V.R. Krishna Iyer in Kochi. —Photo:Deccan Chronicle

The charge against Perarivalan was that he had made the belt bomb that the LTTE suicide attacker Dhanu wore. In the mercy petition sent to the President, he cites a 2005 interview to the Tamil weekly Kumudam in which Raghothaman, who was the chief investigating officer of the case, said: “We don’t know who made the belt bomb which was worn by the human bomb Dhanu.”

The text of the mercy petition and some other documents relating to the case are included in Perarivalan’s book “An Appeal from The Death Row”, published by Thruvalluvar Periyar Maanuda Ondriyan, Jolarpettai. It is, in fact, an appeal to the nation's conscience.

In a foreword, Justice Krishna Iyer writes, “Perarivalan is now under sentence of death in the Vellore Jail. His soul is precious, his values noble, his jail life has not made him a criminal. Indeed, he redeems his colleagues and his book is evidence of the noble work of the man.”

Arputham’s was the plea of a mother. Many political parties in Tamil Nadu have asked that the lives of the Tamils who have been sentenced to death be spared. They are essentially voicing Tamil sentiments. Similarly, in Kashmir, there are sentiments in favout of Afzal Guru, who has been sentenced to death in the Parliament assault case.

Perarivalan and Afzal Guru were not present at the scenes of the crimes. On the basis of this fact and other circumstances relating to the two cases many have expressed the view that they did not deserve the extreme penalty.

Cases in which persons were wrongly convicted are not unknown. There have been instances in which courts in many lands acknowledged the mistake and reversed their decisions in the light of fresh material which came to light after the conviction. The problem with the death penalty is that it does not leave room for correction if the conviction is subsequently found to have been wrong.

The cases of Perarivalan, Guru and others in the Death Row need to be viewed in the light of widely accepted human rights ideals. Capital punishment is an extension of the primitive concept oi a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye and a life for a life. It is actually not a punishment at all. It is an act of revenge perpetrated by the state in the name of the society. Many countries have abolished capital punishment or at least stopped awarding it. It is time India did the same.

Afzal Guru condemns Delhi High Court blast

Afzal Guru, convicted and sentenced to death in the Parliament House attack case, has condemned the bomb blast at the Delhi High Court and deplored attempts to drag his name into the matter.

The following is the text of the statement:

Date. 8.9.2011

From Tihar jail No.3

It is a serious matter of concern that some criminal elements and anti-social persons committed that heinous and barbarous crime of bomb blast in Delhi High Court. It is a cowardly act and must be condemned by all. No religion permits killing of innocent persons.

I am disturbed that my name has been unnecessarily dragged in this connection. Some agencies/groups are playing dirty game by falsely involving my name. This is not for the first time that my name has been dragged by some mischievous persons /groups for such
heinous crimes. It has become a routine that whenever such blasts take place my
name is sought to be dragged in in order to de-characterize and malign me to cultivate public opinion against me.
I am sending this statement through Shri N.D.Pancholi, my advocate, and request the
press to publish this statement.

Sd/- Afzal Guru
s/o Habibullah
W. No. 8 (H.S.W.)
Jail No.3. Tihar.


Statement by Afzal Guru’s lawyer

The following is a communication from Mr Pancholi, forwarding Afzal Guru’s statement:

In my capacity of Mohammad Afzal Guru’s lawyer and as a member of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, I am enclosing the statement of Afzal Guru.

There is no doubt that the attack on the Parliament was to be condemned as totally unjustifiable on several basic grounds. But there were several questions about the way the entire investigation into the crime was carried out and how the accused were sought to be demonized via the electronic media even before the trial was started.

And once again within hours of the horrific bomb blast outside the Delhi High Court on 7th September,2011 in which so many lives were blown up, the name of Afzal Guru has been dragged in. The media, quoting an e mail whose veracity has not even been established, are broadcasting on prime time that the blast was motivated by a group supporting Afzal Guru.

The corporate media is not accountable to anyone, and there is no effective authority to monitor the functioning of the 24 hour TV channels and protect victims of violations of basic journalistic ethics. All the discussions on the talk shows are heavily loaded against anyone trying to put forward any view that the anchor does not support. Though electronic media talk loudly against corruption, yet it does not realize its own corruption of having power without any responsibility.

The media portrays anyone talking on behalf of Afzal Guru as anti-Indian as if
patriotism is the monopoly of the national security experts, anchors of the corporate media and the Hindu Right alone.

Our Save Afzal Guru Campaign brought into focus the following aspects of Indian democracy:

1. The corruption of the investigating agencies and the lack of professionalism in their work was exposed. The Investigating Officer in the Parliament attack case was many times decorated but later he was shot dead because of his involvement in shady real estate dealings involving crores of rupees. By hanging Afzal we will take away attention
from the corruption of the policemen of the Special cell.

2. The fact that the judiciary was more influenced by the media campaign rather than
constitutional and legal principles with the result that the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence only to “satisfy the national conscience of the country”. This is not a legal ground for sentencing anyone to death. By hanging Afzal it would mean Indian citizens can be hanged to satisfy Indian right-wing and corporate interests.

3. The chargesheet in the Parliament attack case accused three Pakistanies i.e. Maulana Masood Azhar, Ghazi Baba and Tariq Ahmed as masterminds of the attack. The said masterminds were not caught. Those who were involved in the actual killing were
dead. And so even if Afzal was a part of the conspiracy he could not be given a death sentence because he neither masterminded the attack nor participated in it. By hanging Afzal the responsibility of finding the real culprits and dealing with real causes of
terrorism would be put aside.

4. The human rights campaigners proved that two persons arrested were innocent. This included a pregnant Sikh woman who gave birth to her baby in the jail. Her life has been completely wrecked. We never saw her on the TV channels and the terrible tragedy of her life. It showed how dispensable some citizens are.

5. The people of Kashmir saw that there were people in Delhi and other parts of the country who genuinely showed solidarity with them and campaigned for justice in the
case. Hanging Afzal will breach such delicate bridges built between the people of Kashmir and the people in rest of India. .

6. Afzal Guru was never given a fair trial and he was not represented by any lawyer of his choice because lawyers were not willing to take up his case. Even the most important witnesses were not crossexamined. By hanging Afzal we will undermine the right to fair trial which is guaranteed to every person under the Indian Constitution.

The whole experience of the Parliament attack case exposed the weakness of our democratic institutions but it also showed that if a small group of committed activists and lawyers choose to fight for democratic space it was possible. If Afzal Guru is hanged that space would be jeopardized. The Hindu right-wing can celebrate with fireworks; the corporate media may get something dramatic to report on for a few days but Indian democracy would suffer a body blow. That is why Afzal Guru must not be hanged.

I enclose his statement for publication as requested by him so that people may hear the voice of a man who has been wronged.

Ray of hope in death row

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

With the rejection of some mercy petitions lying undecided in the Presidential mansion for years, India faces the prospect of a season of executions. This has led to renewed debate on the merits of capital punishment.

According to Amnesty International, which has been campaigning globally against capital punishment, 96 countries have either scrapped it or stopped resorting to it. Last year executions were reported only from 23 of the 58 countries which are holding on to capital punishment.

Among the countries which are keen to retain the death penalty are the United States, China, India and Pakistan. About 300 persons in India, 3,220 in the United States and more than 7,000 in Pakistan were reported to be under death sentence in 2009. According to Pakistani human rights activist Ansar Burney, 60 to 65 per cent of the death row prisoners in that country are innocent or victims of a faulty justice system.

The President of India has the power to grant a convict clemency, which can take the form of commutation of sentence or even pardon, after the judicial process is exhausted. The Supreme Court has held that the exercise of this power does not involve modification or supersession of the judicial verdict.

Under the established procedure, the convict or his relatives can file a mercy petition before the President. It is sent to the Home Ministry which conveys to the President the advice of the Council of Ministers.

Mercy petitions began piling up as the government took its own time to tender advice to the President or the President did not issue orders based on the Cabinet’s advice.

President KR Narayanan (1997-20020) did not clear any mercy petition. President APJ Abdul Kalam (2002-07) decided just two. He rejected the petition of Dhananjoy Chatterjee of Kolkata, who was convicted of raping and murdering a school girl, and commuted the death sentence on Kheraj Ram, a Rajasthani villager, who had killed his wife, two children and brother-in-law, to life term.

Pratibha Patil, who began her term as president with a backlog of mercy petitions, had to take up the pending cases as the Supreme Court, in a judgment in 2009, said the condemned prisoner and his suffering relatives had a right to demand early decision on their pleas. If a decision was not taken within a reasonable period, the death sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment, it added.

In July Devinderpal Singh Bhullat, who was convicted in a case of terrorism in Punjab filed a petition in the Supreme Court complaining there had been inordinate delay in the disposal of his mercy petition. Within days, the government advised the President to reject it.

At that time the president also had before her the Cabinet’s advice to reject the petitions of Afzal Guru, who was convicted in connection with the terrorist attack on the Parliament House in 2001 and of Perarivalan, Santhan and Murugan, who were convicted in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 on the orders of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief V Prabhakaran.

Last week the Madras High Court took up for consideration petitions filed by the Rajiv Gandhi case convicts asking that they be spared the gallows as they had spent many years under the shadow of death. This offers a slender ray of hope for 18 men who have already spent many years in prison waiting for the government and the President to take a decision on their fate.

Sectarian factors often cloud dispassionate consideration of the issue of death penalty.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has criticised the Central government repeatedly for not hanging Afzal Guru. It has not evinced the same interest in the cases of others in the death row, some of whom got there earlier than him.

Human rights organisations sought to raise the death penalty issue when Dhananjoy Chatterjee was facing the gallows. Middle class groups in West Bengal, including affiliates of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, argued that a rapist deserved no mercy.

The Akali Dal-led government in Punjab has appealed for mercy for Bhullar. After the High Court admitted the petitions of the Rajiv Gandhi case convicts, the Tamil Nadu Assembly, taking note of the sympathy in the state for the Sri Lankan Tamils, passed a resolution seeking mercy for the LTTE men.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah raised the BJP’s hackles by tweeting what would be the response if the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly similarly sought mercy for Afzal Guru. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 5, 2011.