LANDMARK JUDGEMENT BY THE SUPREME COURT SPARKS NEW HOPES FOR BHULLAR.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday commuted the death penalty of fifteen convicts belonging to the gang of infamous sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, to life sentence on account of delay in deciding their mercy pleas. They had filed their mercy pleas back in 2004.

The ruling from the court which read “Inordinate and unreasonable delay attribute to torture. Whether the convict is a terrorist or an ordinary criminal, delay is a ground for commutation of death sentence," has risen new hopes for Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar. The court today accepted that prolonged imprisonment of a convict awaiting execution amounts to cruelty and violates the fundamental right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Article 72 (i) of the Constitution lays down the powers of the President to grant pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions of punishment or to suspend, remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of an offence where the sentence is a sentence of death, where the sentence or punishment is by court martial or where the punishment or sentence is for an offence against any law relating to a matter to which the executive power of the Union extends. But the powers of the President to decide such matters are limited and ultimately the Home Ministry gets to have the final say. Since no time bar has been put within which such pleas ought to be decided, delay in such cases are a common sight in India.

Fortunately, the judiciary today woke up to the plight of those awaiting pardons, and pronounced today that the prisoner should be executed within 14 days of a clemency appeal being rejected.

It is popularly believed that this landmark judgment could help Bhullar in getting a pardon. His family has claimed that he has become mentally ill. His mercy was rejected long ago in May 2011 by the President. The Supreme Court Bench also rejected his mercy plea last year, after which he filed another petition for review. The judgment is also seen as a first step to undo the harm done by the blatant abuse of human rights that have become a common practice in the name of criminal justice system in India.