NEW Delhi, April 1 (TNN): The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed Centre’s petition seeking review of judgment commuting death penalty to life imprisonment of Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan.
In a short order dismissing Centre’s review petition, a three-judge bench headed by CJI said, “we find no merit in the review petition.” “We have carefully gone through the review petition and the connected papers. We find no merit in the review petition and the same is accordingly dismissed,” a bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam and justices Ranjan Gogoi and SK Singh said.
The Centre had contended in its petition that the three-judge bench did not consider the merits of the case and also ventured into the domain of government by commuting the death sentence in the case.
It had further contended the February 18 judgment was passed without jurisdiction by the three-judge bench instead of by a larger bench of five judges as the case involved substantial interpretation of law and provisions of the constitution.
The Centre in its petition had said: “It is respectfully submitted that the impugned judgment is patently illegal, suffers from errors apparent on the face of the record and flies in the face of well-established principles of law laid down by this court and contained in the constitution and other statutes.”
“It is submitted that in the present case, the issue raised was that of the commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment on the ground of delay, which allegedly attracted Article 21 in favour of the convicts. Therefore, it involved a substantial issue of interpretation of the constitution and ought to have been heard by a bench of five judges, as mandated by the Constitution,” the petition added.
The apex court order comes as a relief to the three convicts, whose death sentence had been commuted to life in prison. Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan had petitioned the apex court against their death sentence, arguing that there had been an exceptional delay in a decision on their mercy pleas. Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber at an election rally in Sriperumbedur on May 21, 1991.
