SC commutes death sentence due to 5 years of inordinate, unexplained delay

The Supreme Court bench comprising Justices NV Ramana, Deepak Gupta and Indira Banerjee while reviewing a mercy petition filed by the Petitioner, Jagdish who was tried for the murder of his wife and five children upheld the death sentence. Jagdish had been convicted by the trial court in the year 2006 and sentenced to death. The matter had been challenged before the jurisdictional High Court. He had filed a mercy petition before the jail authorities on 13.10.2009 which was rejected by the President of India after close to 5 years on 16.07.2014.

The Petitioner filed a Writ Petition challenging the rejection of his mercy petition on the grounds that the same was rejected after 5 years delay. Alongside the mercy petition, he also filed a criminal appeal praying for commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment.

In the instant matter, the Supreme Court did not interfere with the merits of the case as three courts had already concurred on the fact that the petitioner had murdered his wife and five children. Having said this, the Supreme Court delved on the fact that the instant matter doesn’t fall within the meaning of ‘rarest of the rare cases’ and that the Petitioner was suffering from mental illness. Also, the Petitioner has been incarcerated for almost 14 years and execution of the death sentence at this stage would virtually mean imposing two sentences upon him – a sentence of life imprisonment and then a sentence of death. The Supreme Court was constrained to observe that the un-explained delay was on the part of the State of Madhya Pradesh which to make matters worse had not even cared to file any counter affidavit in the Writ Petition even though a notice was issued 4 years ago.

“The delay in forwarding the petition is totally un-explained and this Court cannot countenance an un-explained delay of more than 4 years. We are dealing here with the case of a person who has been sentenced to death. The mercy petition is the last hope of a person on death row. Every dawn will give rise to a new hope that his mercy petition may be accepted. By nightfall this hope also dies. Inordinate and unexplained delay in deciding the mercy petition and the consequent delay in execution of death sentence for years on end is another form of punishment which was awarded by the Court. This Court has repeatedly held that in cases where death sentence has to be executed, the same should be done as early as possible and if mercy petitions are not forwarded for 4 years and no explanation is submitted, we cannot but hold that the delay is inordinate and un-explained”

Supreme Court referred to a similar matter previously addressed by the same court in V. Sriharan alias Murugan v. UOI & Ors and Ajay Kumar Pal v. UOI & Or where there has been a delay of 5 years and 3 years, respectively.

The Supreme Court accordingly commuted the death sentence to that of life. While considering that 6 innocent lives were lost, the Supreme Court directed that life imprisonment in this case shall mean the entire remaining life of the petitioner and he shall not be released till his death.

- Jagdish v. State of Madhya Pradesh, in Cr. Appeal No. 338/2018 with WP (Crl) No. 197/14, decided on 21 February 2019, by Justice NV Ramana, Justice Deepak Guta and Justice Indira Banerjee)