Kasab’s mercy plea rejected

October 23, 2012 · 0 Comments

NEW DELHI

The Union home ministry has rejected his plea of commuting death penalty and sent the file to President Pranab Mukherjee for taking the final decision.
In an unprecedented move, the home ministry — which took years in sending mercy petition files of other convicts on death row — has sent Kasab’s file to Rashtrapati Bhavan within three weeks of getting the note of rejection from Maharashtra governor K Sankaranarayan.
“Since the state government and the governor had already rejected Kasab’s mercy petition, the home ministry need not send it again to state. It simply processed it at its end taking state’s advice and sent it to the President for taking final call”, said a senior home ministry official.
The official said it was now upto the President to take a decision. “Since Article 72 of the Constitution doesn’t prescribe any time limit, it is entirely upto President as to when he takes his call — whether to accept Kasab’s mercy petition or reject it”, said the official.
The petition of the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist, addressed to President Pranab Mukherjee in Urdu which was converted into Hindi, had first reached the state government early last month.
The state government had then sent it to the governor who subsequently rejected it.
The Supreme Court had on August 29 confirmed the death sentence, awarded to Kasab for waging war against India in which 166 persons were killed and more than 300 were injured.
Kasab was the only terrorist captured alive in the November 26 Mumbai terror attacks.