President Pranab Mukherjee may turn down 5 more mercy pleas

February 15, 2013

President-rejects

New Delhi, Feb 15: The Union home ministry is learnt to have recommended rejection of mercy petitions in five more cases as it seeks to speedily dispose of all the cases of death row convicts pending with it.

Seeking to have a swift closure on the cases of those who have filed mercy pleas against capital punishment awarded to them, the ministry has sent all the pending files to President Pranab Mukherjee for a final call.

Sources said that seven cases involving the fate of nine people have been sent to the President, with the ministry recommending rejection of the mercy pleas in five cases. It has and left the two remaining ones open for commutation of death sentence to life imprisonment with the rider that the life term means jail for the entire life of the convict and not just 20 years or 14 years in prison.

The President had sent the files to Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on October 30 for his review and opinion. Shinde sent the files back within 100 days in a major shift from the pattern where decisions on mercy petitions were indefinitely delayed with files shuttling between the home ministry and the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Though the case-wise recommendations for convicts were not known as both the home ministry and Rashtrapati Bhavan continue to remain tightlipped on mercy petition files, the seven cases relate to multiple murders, including one in which a rape convict out on bail killed five members of the victim's family.

While two files were sent to Rashtrapati Bhavan on February 9 (the day Parliament House attack case convict Afzal Guru was hanged), the remaining five files were dispatched last month.

The mercy files, which have been pending for years while moving to and fro between Rashtrapati Bhavan and the home ministry, saw unprecedented movement of late, resulting in two quick hangings (Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru) within less than three months. Mukherjee had rejected the mercy plea of Kasab on November 5, and Guru on February 3.

The files, which are now with President Mukherjee, include the longest pending case of Gurmeet Singh of Uttar Pradesh, who was convicted for killing 13 members of a family on August 17, 1986. The others cases are of Suresh and Ramji, also from UP, who were convicted for killing five members of their brother's family and Dharampal from Haryana, who had murdered five members of the family of a girl he had raped in 1993. He had murdered the family while on bail in the rape case.

The other cases are of Sonia, daughter of a former Haryana MLA, and her husband Sanjeev, who drugged and killed eight of her family in Hisar in 2001, including her parents. Sunder Singh from Uttarakhand is convicted for rape and murder on June 30, 1989, Jafar Ali from Uttar Pradesh who was convicted for killing wife and five daughter in 2002 and Praveen Kumar of Karnataka, convicted for killing four members of a family on February 23, 1994.

Mukherjee has so far disposed of mercy petitions of eight death row convicts in five cases.

The President has also rejected the mercy petitions of Saibanna Ningappa Natikar (Karnataka: convicted for killing wife and daughter) and mercy petitions of slain forest brigand Veerappan's associates Gnanaprakash, Simon, 'Meesai' Madaian and Pilavendran, who were sentenced to death for killing 22 police personnel in 1993.

However, the mercy petition of Atbir (Delhi), who was convicted for murder of his step-mother, step-sister and step-brother over property, was commuted to life imprisonment by the President.

Strained mercy:

1,455 persons awarded death penalty in India from 2001 to 2011

Sentences for 4,321 persons were commuted from death penalty to life imprisonment during the same period.

Highest number of death penalty was imposed in Uttar Pradesh (370) followed by Bihar (132), Maharashtra (125), Karnataka and Tamil Nadu (95 each), Madhya Pradesh (87), Jharkhand (81), West Bengal (79), Delhi (71), Gujarat (57), Rajasthan (38), Kerala (34), Odisha (33), Haryana (31), Assam (21), Jammu & Kashmir (20), Punjab (19), Chhattisgarh (18), Uttarakhand (16), Andhra Pradesh (8), Meghalaya (6), Chandigarh and Daman & Diu (4 each), Manipur and Himachal Pradesh (3 each), Tripura and Pondicherry (2 each) and Goa (1)

No death penalty imposed in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim and Union Territories of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep\

Sentences of 4,321 persons were commuted from death penalty to life imprisonment in the country during 2001-11

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News Network
February 4,2020

New Delhi, Feb 4: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday accused Arvind Kejriwal of having a "partnership" with Pakistan and appealed to the people in Delhi to not vote for the AAP chief as it will make Pakistan happy.

Ramping up his attack on the Shaheen Bagh protest, Adityanath said that the protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is merely an excuse for people to vent their anger against the scrapping of Article 370.

"You must have seen their partnership on 370. Arvind Kejriwal used to speak in the same voice as Imran Khan on Article 370. You must have heard it.

"Now when elections are taking place in Delhi, who is speaking in favour of Arvind Kejriwal? It is the ministers of Pakistan. They are aware that Kejriwal is feeding 'biryani to protesters at Shaheen Bagh'," he said, referring to Pakistan minister Fawad Chaudhry's tweet asking Indians to defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Adityanath addressed three rallies on Monday in the national capital ahead of assembly elections.

"Will Pakistan decide who Indians should vote for. If voting for Kejriwal will make Pakistan happy, should it be done," he asked at a rally in Mehrauli.

Adityanath said his Delhi counterpart Kejriwal has become a "toy in the hands of anti-social and anti-India elements".

Addressing a rally in Vikaspuri in west Delhi, he said that Kejriwal is not bothered about key issues such as providing clean drinking water but is concerned about Shaheen Bagh, the anti-citizenship amendment act protest site.

At another rally in Uttam Nagar in west Delhi, Adityanath said Kejriwal has played with the emotions of the people of Delhi for the last five years.

"He obstructed the development of Delhi. And knowingly and unknowingly, he became a toy in the hands of anti-social and anti-India elements," Adityanath said.

The protest at Shaheen Bagh, he said, has disrupted traffic across the capital.

"A guest with an appointment to meet him at 9.30 am could only reach at 11. He told me he had left as early as 7 am but got stuck because of the traffic in Shaheen Bagh," he said.

The Uttar Pradesh chief minister also slammed Kejriwal for "sympathising" with elements who he said gave anti-India slogans in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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News Network
March 4,2020

New Delhi, Mar 4: A court in Delhi on Wednesday convicted expelled BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar of culpable homicide not amounting to murder in the death of the Unnao rape victim's father.

District judge Dharmesh Sharma said Sengar had no intention of killing the victim's father. “He was beaten in a brutal manner that led to his death,” the judge said.

The court had sent Sengar to jail on December 20 for the “remainder of his natural biological life” for raping the woman in 2017, when she was a minor.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had examined 55 witnesses in support of the case and the defence examined nine witnesses.

The court had recorded the statements of the rape survivor's uncle, mother, sister and one of her father's colleague who claimed to be an eyewitness to the incident.

Charges were framed against Sengar, his brother Atul, Bhadauria, sub-inspector Kamta Prasad, constable Amir Khan and six others in the case.

The case was transferred to Delhi from a trial court in Uttar Pradesh on the directions of the Supreme Court on August 1 last year.

In July, 2019 a truck rammed into the car the rape victim was travelling in with some family members and her lawyer.

Two of her aunts died in the incident. She was airlifted from a hospital in Lucknow and to AIIMS in Delhi.

The victim has been provided accommodation in Delhi and is under CRPF protection.

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News Network
June 19,2020

Kolkata, Jun 19: The nationwide clamour for boycott of Chinese goods is getting louder amid the Ladakh face-off, with traders urging the Centre to direct e-commerce firms to restrict the sale of items from the Dragonland, which imports products worth USD 74 billion to India annually.

Of the total import from China, retail traders sell goods worth around USD 17 billion, mostly comprising toys, household items, mobiles, electric and electronic goods and cosmetics among other things, which could possibly be replaced by Indian products, a national trading body said.

"We, at 'Federation of All India Vyapar Mandal', are advising our members to clear their stocks of Chinese products and refrain from placing fresh orders. We are also requesting the government to restrict e-commerce companies from selling Chinese products," V K Bansal, the association's general secretary, told PTI.

Sushil Poddar, the president of the Confederation of West Bengal Traders Association, said its members have been told to shun trading in Chinese goods as much as possible.

Another national traders' body, The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), has decided to step up its movement against the boycott of Chinese goods, under its campaign 'Bhartiya Samaan-Hamara Abhimaan'.

It released a list of over 450 broad categories of commodities, comprising 3,000 Chinese products.

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