The President took just 13 days to reject the mercy petition of Devinder Singh Bhullar, reveals a reply from the 
Rashtrapati Bhavan to an RTI application. The petition, according to this communication, was received at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on May 13, 2011 and was rejected on May 25.
The Supreme Court served a notice this week to the Union Government, asking it to explain the inordinate delay in disposing Bhullar’s mercy petition. The Union Government has been asked to file its affidavit in the matter on October 10 and the issue is expected to come up before the court on October 19.
Information secured under the Right to Information Act also reveals that the Punjab government had made no move to intercede till July.
Bhullar, sentenced to death in 2001 for a bomb blast that killed nine security personnel in 1993, has been on the death row for more than a decade. He had filed the petitions in 2003 but the Ministry of Home Affairs apparently forwarded them to the President only in May, 2011. Curiously, while the MHA took eight long years to forward the petitions, the President did not have to wait even two weeks before making up her mind.
The Rashtrapati Bhavan further informed that as many as 148 appeals against the rejection had been received by the President till the end of August this year.
Between January, 2002 and July, 2007, the Rashtrapati Bhavan received five mercy petitions, three of which continue to be pending. The petition of Dhananjay Chatterjee, a gatekeeper accused of raping and killing a teenager in an apartment in Kolkata, was rejected within a month. The convict was hanged soon thereafter.
The remaining petition, that of one Kheraj Ram, was decided in just about two weeks though and the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2006.
Between 2007 and July, 2011, as many as 22 mercy petitions were received by the President, claims the reply, out of which only two were rejected. But while it took more than six months to turn down the petition of Mahendra Nath Das from Assam in May this year, Bhullar’s petition took 13 days to be rejected.
Significantly, as many as nine out of these 22 petitions were disposed favourably and the death sentences were commuted to imprisonment for life. As many as 11 petitions remain pending though.
News Source: The Tribune
