The Supreme Court Friday asked the Centre to take a decision before January 26 on Balwant S Rajoana’s plea seeking commutation of death penalty in former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh’s assassination case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde said that the decision be taken before the Republic Day which is a “good date”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We will give two-three weeks. You should complete the process before January 26. January 26 is a good day. It will be appropriate if you take a decision before that,” the bench said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rajoana, a former Punjab Police constable, was convicted for his involvement in an explosion outside the Punjab civil secretariat that killed Beant Singh and 16 others in 1995.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Rajoana, argued that his client’s mercy petition is pending since 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This court has held that the death sentence of a person, if delayed for over eight years, can be commuted. He has been jail for 25 years, Rohatgi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Additional Solicitor General K M Nataraj, appearing for the Centre, assured the court that a decision will be taken and the file will be sent to the President by then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Competent authority is looking into the file. We will try to do it by then,” Nataraj said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The apex court had on December 4 questioned the Centre over delay in sending to the President the proposal for commuting the Rajoana’s death sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It had asked the Centre to apprise it as to when the authority would send the proposal in this regard to the President under Article 72 of the Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The article deals with power of President to grant pardon, suspend, remit or commute sentences in certain cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The apex court had noted that a letter was sent from the Ministry of Home Affairs to Punjab chief secretary on September 7 last year intimating that a proposal would be sent to the President to commute the death sentence of Rajoana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His plea sought direction for expeditious disposal of the MHA proposal.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Supreme Court Friday asked the Centre to take a decision before January 26 on Balwant S Rajoana’s plea seeking commutation of death penalty in former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh’s assassination case. A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde said that the decision be taken before the Republic Day which is a “good date”. “We will give two-three weeks. You should complete the process before January 26. January 26 is a good day. It will be appropriate if you take a decision before that,” the bench said.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29009,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29007\/revisions\/29009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}