New Delhi: The Home Ministry on Friday made it clear that former President APJ Abdul Kalam's acceptance of the mercy petition of an Assam death row convict was conveyed to his successor Pratibha Patil and she was not kept in the dark. In a statement, the Home Ministry said the entire file related to death row convict Mahendra Nath Das, including the minutes recorded by the previous President, were placed before the then President Pratibha Patil for her consideration.
The clarification came after the Supreme Court observed that Patil was "kept in the dark" by the Home Ministry about the view of her predecessor Kalam, who had ordered commuting the death sentence of Das to life imprisonment.
The Ministry said when a mercy petition is considered, a basic note is prepared by the division concerned and the Joint Secretary concerned submits the same through the Additional Secretary and the Home Secretary to the Home Minister. In the case of Mahendra Nath Das, a basic note was prepared on September 30, 2010. Paragraph 10 of the basic note extracted the view recorded by Kalam. The Joint Secretary who submitted the note to the Home Minister also referred to the view of Kalam at para 4 of his note.
The Home Minister recorded his advice to the President on October 12, 2010. "Thereafter, a summary for the President was prepared and submitted to the President on October 18, 2010. President Patil gave her decision on May 8, 2011....
07:33 PM, May 03, 2013
Guwahati: Murder convict Mahendra Nath Das, whose death sentence was on Wednesday commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court, thanked 'God for finally answering his prayers'. Das wept with joy when the news of the revised sentence was conveyed to him at the Jorhat Central Jail where he is currently lodged, jail officials said. "Atlast, God has answered my prayers. I am grateful to him", Das, who spends his...
04:47 PM, May 01, 2013
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has commuted the death sentence of Assam murder convict Mahendra Nath Das to life sentence. MN Das was convicted in two murder cases in Assam in 1997. The court has commuted the death penalty on the grounds of delay in execution. Mahendra Nath Das killed a man, Rajen Das, in Guwahati in 1990 and surrendered. On April 24, 1996, Mahendra Nath Das beheaded Harakanta Das...
12:23 PM, May 01, 2013
Pyongyang: North Korea announced on Saturday that an American detained for nearly six months is being tried in the Supreme Court on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, a crime that could draw the death penalty if he is convicted. The case involving Kenneth Bae, who has been in North Korean custody since early November 2012, further complicates already fraught relations between Pyongyang and Washington following weeks of heightened...
07:40 AM, Apr 28, 2013
Washington: Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said on Saturday, days after the US government finally received details about the call. In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said. The...
06:56 AM, Apr 28, 2013
Boston: The surviving suspect in last week's Boston Marathon bombing was moved to a prison medical center outside Boston on Friday, while the body of his older brother who died in a shootout with police remained unclaimed, officials said. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old ethnic Chechen charged with the bombing that killed three people and wounded 264, was moved from the hospital where he was kept under guard since he was...
06:10 AM, Apr 27, 2013
Washington/New York: The two men accused of carrying out last week's bombing of the Boston Marathon planned a second bomb attack on New York's Times Square, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday. The brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's original intent when they hijacked a car and its driver in Boston last Thursday night was to drive to New York with bombs and detonate them in Times Square,...
12:47 AM, Apr 26, 2013
Washington: US lawmakers grilled top security officials on Tuesday about the handling of the Boston Marathon bombing investigation and why one of the suspects flagged as a possible Islamist radical was not tracked more closely. FBI officials briefed members of Congress behind closed doors in Washington about the investigation into the April 15 blasts that killed three people and injured 264 others. Authorities say the ethnic Chechen brothers, who immigrated...
09:01 AM, Apr 24, 2013
Washington: In the years before the Boston Marathon bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev fell under the influence of a new friend, a Muslim convert who steered the religiously apathetic young man toward a strict strain of Islam, family members said. Under the tutelage of a friend known to the Tsarnaev family only as Misha, Tamerlan gave up boxing and stopped studying music, his family said. He began opposing the wars in Afghanistan...
06:59 AM, Apr 24, 2013
Washington: Boston bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev has been charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against persons and property in the US and could face the death penalty if convicted, the Attorney General's office said on Tuesday. The charges came as the White House said on Monday that Tsarnaev is not an 'enemy combatant' and as a US citizen cannot be tried under military laws. "He is...
09:43 AM, Apr 23, 2013
New Delhi: The Pune German Bakery blast convict Himayat Baig has been sentenced to death. Baig, the lone convicted accused in the case, was sentenced to death by a Pune Sessions Court. Additional Sessions Judge NP Dhote handed down capital punishment to Baig for murder and criminal conspiracy, besides under provisions of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Explosive Substances Act. The court had on April 15 pronounced Baig, the only...
05:00 PM, Apr 18, 2013
Chennai: The video conferencing session of Perarivalan, a death row convict in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, with the Chief Information Commissioner planned on Monday over his RTI query has been postponed, a top police official said. "The session has been postponed. There is no information on when would be the next session," ADGP (Prisons) JK Tripathy told PTI. The hearing was to take place today on Perarivalan's Right to...
07:04 PM, Apr 15, 2013
Although the global trend towards abolition remained strong, 2012 saw a disappointing resumption of executions in some countries including India, the latest Amnesty International report on death penalty and capital sentencing around the world in 2012 has revealed. The total number of confirmed executions was 682, two more than in 2011 with India accounting for one of them - the hanging of Mumbai 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab. The data from...
11:02 AM, Apr 12, 2013
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has stayed the execution of eight prisoners for a month after President Pranab Mukherjee rejected their mercy plea. The apex court has said that it wants to make sure whether the family has been duly informed and the Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru episode isn't repeated. The convicts' counsel had filed petitions challenging the rejection of their mercy plea. During the hearing, the bench said...
10:02 AM, Apr 07, 2013
Twenty one more people have been killed in clashes between Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) supporters and police taking the toll to about 80 after a tribunal awarded death penalty to Islamist leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee for 1971 war crimes. A two-day strike called by JI that started on Sunday coincided with President Pranab Mukherjee's maiden visit to the country. ...
09:20 AM, Mar 04, 2013
Bangladesh war crimes tribunal on Thursday handed down death penalty to a top leader of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami for "crimes against humanity" during the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan, triggering fierce clashes across the country that left at least 35 people dead. 73-year-old Delwar Hossain Sayedee, vice-president of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), was sentenced to death after he was found guilty of eight counts out of 20 involving rape, mass killings and...
11:55 PM, Feb 28, 2013
Bangladesh was on the boil on Thursday as at least 23 people, including three policemen, were killed and scores injured in violence after a death sentence was handed down to a top leader of the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami for "crimes against humanity" during the 1971 liberation war. The violence followed the verdict of the special Bangladeshi tribunal that handed down death penalty to Delwar Hossain Sayedee, vice-president of the party, amid...
08:17 PM, Feb 28, 2013
Justice Usha Mehra, who submitted a report on the police response during and after the Delhi gangrape incident, has said that the juvenile accused in similar cases, "if they know what they are doing, should be punished". Speaking to CNN-IBN, Justice Mehra also advocated death penalty for the rarest of rare rape cases. ...
02:55 PM, Feb 23, 2013
Supreme Court on Wednesday cited Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar case and extended the stay on the execution of four aides of the infamous forest brigand Veerappan "till further orders". The apex court also adjourned the matter for six weeks. ...
11:44 AM, Feb 20, 2013
Former Tamil Nadu chief minister and DMK chief M Karunanidhi on Monday called for the abolition of death penalty. The leader issued a statement saying had the long-pending demand for the abolition of death penalty been obliged, executions happening now could have been avoided. ...
05:35 PM, Feb 18, 2013
