India hanging postponed
2013-02-20 22:25
New Delhi - India's Supreme Court on Wednesday extended a
stay on the hanging of four death-row convicts by six months after rights
groups voiced growing concern over recent executions in the country.
The lawyer for the four accomplices of slain "bandit
king" Veerappan who were sentenced to death in 2004 for a deadly blast in
southern India had approached the Supreme Court because he believed their
executions were imminent.
Colin Gonsalve has said he is seeking to have their
sentences commuted to life imprisonment "for the mental distress they have
suffered during the inordinate eight-year delay in deciding on their mercy
plea".
But the court on Wednesday said another Supreme Court
bench was hearing a similar case to that of the four men and it would await its
ruling.
"We adjourn the hearing of this matter for six
months to enable another bench to deliver the judgment in another pending
matter," the court said.
The Supreme Court rulings could be precedent-setting for
many other inmates who have been lingering on India's death row for years,
lawyers have said.
President Pranab Mukherjee last week rejected the mercy
plea of the four accomplices of Veerappan being held in Belgaum jail in
Karnataka state.
The four were convicted of setting a landmine explosion
that killed 22 policemen.
Executions in India are only carried out in "rarest
of rare" cases.
But Mukherjee, recently elected president, has rejected a
number of mercy pleas in the last few months, ending an informal eight-year
moratorium on executions.
"This government has executed more people since
November 2012 than in the previous 10 years. To continue such a regressive
trend would be truly shameful," said G Ananthapadmanabhan, chief executive
of Amnesty International India.
Earlier this month Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri separatist
convicted of involvement in a 2001 raid on the Indian parliament, was executed.
The lone surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks,
Pakistani-born Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, was hanged last November in the nation's
first execution since 2004.
Veerappan, accused of over 100 killings, died in a police
ambush in 2004 after evading capture for decades.
He was believed to have amassed a vast fortune from
elephant poaching, sandalwood smuggling and kidnappings.
