Afzal's clemency plea has to wait

New Delhi: Tihar jail officials have put on hold arrangements to hang Parliament attack convict Mohammed Afzal Guru on October 20, as his family has filed for clemency. The officials may have to wait for long.

The clemency plea for Afzal is among 24 such petitions pending with the Union Home Ministry—the oldest plea is by four men from Punjab who have been facing execution since 1992.

There is no timeframe for deciding on mercy petitions, said a Home Ministry official. Authorities took a long while to decide on a clemency plea for Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was hanged on August 14, 2004 for raping and murdering a child in Kolkata.

Chatterjee filed a mercy petition and it took years before the Government advised the President not to grant him clemency.

There is no official data on how many death sentences have been carried out in the post-Independence era, but the number is roughly put at a little over 50, including the execution of the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The clemency petitions pending with the home ministry include those of Murgan, Santhan and Ariva, all sentenced to death in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The fourth accused in the case was Nalini, whom then President K R Narayanan had granted a pardon in 2000.

The oldest petition pending with the Government is that of terrorists Gurdev Singh, Satnam Singh, Pyara Singh and Sarabjeet Singh, who killed 17 people in Amritsar and were sentenced to death.

Once the date for execution of Afzal was fixed by the Supreme Court, Tihar jail authorities had started preparations, including identifying a hangman to carry out the execution.

"We have for the time being stopped the search for a hangman," the sources said.

Afzal's family on Tuesday submitted a clemency petition to President A P J Abdul Kalam's office.

Afzal's wife Tabassum, who arrived in Delhi on Wednesday, petitioned Kalam seeking commutation of his death sentence, awarded for his role in the December 13, 2001 attack on Parliament.