New Delhi, May 18: Six mercy petitions which landed with the central government after Mohammad Afzal Guru filed his clemency plea in 2006 have already seen decisions on them conveyed to the President.
But the Delhi government has been sitting on Afzal’s plea since October 4, 2006, forcing the ministry of home affairs ( MHA) to write as many as 16 reminders.
The last one sent on April 27 asked the Sheila Dikshit government to expedite the process of sending her government’s recommendation on Afzal’s plea.
The reminder, which MHA officials described as “ routine and no different from the earlier reminders”, was sent a week before 26/ 11 accused Ajmal Qasab was sentenced to death by a Mumbai court on May 6.
Afzal was awarded the death sentence by a Delhi court on December 18, 2002. He was convicted of conspiracy to attack the Parliament on December 13, 2001, waging war against India and murder.
The Delhi High Court upheld the sentence on October 29, 2003, and his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court on August 4, 2005.
A sessions court fixed the date of his hanging on October 20, 2006, in Tihar jail. But Afzal filed a mercy petition with the President, who forwarded it to the home ministry.
The ministry, in turn, sent the report to the Delhi government’s home department for its comments, as the convict was to be executed in the Capital.
The Delhi government has not given its recommendation on the plea for nearly four years but Qasab’s death sentence has brought Afzal’s plea back in focus.
MHA officials said the latest reminder had no link to the verdict in Qasab’s case, but insisted that the Delhi government needed to forward a recommendation at the earliest as it has been four years since it was filed.
Dikshit, however, seemed least bothered.
Asked about the April 27 reminder, she said she was not aware of any such letter.
“ I have not received any letter ( from the home ministry). Maybe the home department ( of the Delhi government received it),” she said.
The last reminder, like the earlier ones, was addressed to the principal secretary ( home), Delhi.
But it is Dikshit who heads the home department.
A senior official in the secretariat said she peruses all communication with the Centre regarding prisoners on death row lodged in the state’s prisons.
Delhi government sources claimed that the file on Afzal was on the move and that the government would give its opinion to the MHA in the shortest possible time.
The BJP on Monday asked the government to come clean on the issue.
Party spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy said people of the country wanted to know if the Delhi government or the Union home ministry were taking a decision on Afzal’s plea.
The only other mercy plea which has taken longer for a recommendation to come from the government was of the three accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. In that case, the MHA forwarded its recommendation five years after the mercy plea was filed.
—Agencies