After Kasab, death row convicts in the queue

New Delhi: Thanks to the hush-hush manner in which he was executed on Wednesday shortly after the rejection of his mercy petition, Ajmal Kasab had been denied his right to challenge the President's decision. Whatever the justification on security considerations, this deviation from the rule of law has opened India to the charges of discriminating against the Pakistani national.It was on account of this right that the execution of other high-profile convicts has been stayed by courts for various reasons even after the President had rejected their mercy petitions.On August 30, 2011, 10 days before they were due to hang, the Madras high court gave a reprieve to three persons awarded capital punishment in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, Santhan, Murugan and Pararivalan. This was after President Pratibha Patil had dismissed their clemency pleas.The following month, the Supreme Court intervened in the case of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar who had been sentenced to death for a 1993 terror attack in Delhi. The apex court entertained his wife's petition although Patil had rejected Bhullar's mercy plea in May 2011.A death row convict from Assam, Mahendra Nath Das, is alive even after the Gauhati high court dismissed his mother's petition in September 2011 against the rejection of his mercy petition by Patil. The Supreme Court's subsequent intervention has forced the authorities to put off his hanging.The trend of death row convicts obtaining judicial relief despite the exhaustion of the clemency option is however not of recent origin. This is evident from the case of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was hanged way back in 2004 and was in fact the last to have been executed in India before Kasab. He was sent to the gallows only after the Calcutta high court had rejected his appeal against President Abdul Kalam's decision on his mercy plea.The law subjecting the President's exercise of his mercy jurisdiction to judicial review was laid down by the Supreme Court in 1988 at the instance of Kehar Singh, who had been sentenced to death in the Indira Gandhi assassination case.Another major ground on which human rights defenders have assailed Kasab's execution is that he had not been provided access to legal assistance in the drafting of his mercy petition. Instead, a one-line mercy petition was sent on his behalf by jail authorities in September. This was despite a letter from advocate Yug Chaudhry to the Maharashtra government and the National Human Rights Commission requesting them to ensure that Kasab was provided the services of a lawyer.