Besides Yakub Memon, others on death row denied President Pranab Mukherjee’s mercy

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, July 30, 2015: President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected 33 mercy petitions in 24 cases, including 20 in his first year alone. This year, President Mukherjee has rejected the mercy petitions of three convicts while commuting one death sentence to life.

Since the January 21, 2014, landmark judgment in the Shatrughan Chauhan case by a bench led by then Chief Justice of India P Sathashivam, 20 death-row convicts have had their sentences commuted to life, including 15 of the 33 whose petitions President Mukherjee has rejected. Among those sentenced before Mukherjee’s tenure are three convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination — V Sriharan (Murugan), T Suthendraraja (Santhan) and A G Perarivalan (Arivu) — on February 18, 2014. Devender Pal Singh Bhullar’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on March 31, 2014.


Surendra Koli

The convict of the Nithari serial killings and rapes of 2005-06. Koli, who worked in the household of Moninder Singh Pandher, was sentenced to death in five cases by the trial court. In one case, Allahabad High Court confirmed the sentence in 2009; the Supreme Court upheld it in 2011. President rejected his mercy petition on July 20, 2014; his review petition dismissed four days later.

Seema Mohan Gavit and Renuka Shinde

The sisters were sentenced to death by a Kolhapur court on June 29, 2001, for kidnapping 13 children and killing nine of them between 1990 and 1996. Their mother, Anjana Bai, also accused, died in 1997 while Renuka’s husband Kiran Shinde turned approver. Sentence confirmed by Bombay High Court in 2004 and upheld by Supreme Court in 2006. Their mercy petition was rejected on July 7, 2014.

 

Courtesy: Indianexpress