New Delhi: After according clemency to 63-year-old Man Bahadur Dewan alias Tote Dewan of Assam, President Pranab Mukherjee is set to reject mercy petitions of Antony from Kerala, awarded death sentence in the sensational 2001 Aluva murder case and Shivaji Shanker Alhat, from Maharashtra awarded death sentence in the rape and murder of a minor in 2002. Both cases have recently been sent by the Union home ministry to the President for rejection of clemency.
With this, the Ministry of home affairs has no files pending with it of death row convicts. Till now, Mr Mukherjee has rejected mercy petitions of 22 death row convicts at a stretch.
Antony was sentenced to death for murdering six members of a family in January 2001. The High Court confirmed the death penalty in 2006 and later the Supreme Court too upheld the lower court’s verdict. His mercy petition was filed in 2013 and the MHA under Rajnath Singh has sent his file for rejection of clemency to the President, top sources said.
The MHA has also rejected the mercy petition of Alhat, a former school teacher facing death sentence for the brutal rape and murder of a minor girl in January 2002. Home Ministry sources said the ministry has cleared its backlog with the disposal of these two cases.
The home minister, Rajnath Singh is keen there is no delay in deciding the mercy petitions on the part of the central government as delays caused earlier in previous cases had caused considerable embarrassment in courts to the government in the past.
The fate of the lone death row convict that now remains hanging is the petition of Balwant Singh Rajoana, convicted for the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh on August 31, 1995, where the ball is in the state government's court.
The MHA has asked Chandigarh for comments as well as the Punjab government to share details of the case where Babbar Khalsa’s Jagtar Singh Tara was recently extradited from UK.
