The Andhra Pradesh High court on Friday directed the state government to consider within six weeks the representation of convicted constable MA Khadeer seeking release by way of a pardon by the state. A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice PC Ghose and Justice Vilas V Afzalpurkar made this order while hearing a plea filed by Khadeer’s wife Sabera Begum who alleged that the authorities were discriminating against her husband in the matter of according pardon.
According to Pushpinder Kaur, the counsel for the petitioner, the reason behind the authorities concerned not being favourable to the constable’s plea is that the person whom Khadeer murdered was an assistant commissioner of police in Chatrinaka division of the city.
“It was not a planned murder. It was an act committed in a fit of rage and happened at a time when the Old City area was caught in the vicious circle of communal clashes in the early 1990s. Khadeer was travelling in a jeep along with his boss ACP Sathaiah when they came across a group of people, most of them children. Sathaiah ordered Khadeer to open fire on the gathering but that enraged Khadeer who shot his boss Sathaiah instead,” Kaur told reporters. Sathaiah died on the spot. Khadeer was arrested and later convicted for life.
The petitioner’s argument is that the authorities who keep awarding early release to convicts after granting pardon, are refusing to oblige Khadeer who has been in jail for the last 22 years.
If the four years’ remission time he has earned till now were to be added, the total term he has served so far would come to 26 years, Kaur reasoned. The Supreme Court has ruled that even in cases where a death penalty has been later commuted to life, the prisoner can be set free after 20 years.
Since Khadeer was not awarded the death sentence, his case should be considered keeping that in view, Kaur said. She found fault with a GO issued in 2001 that bars pardon to persons guilty of killing police officers or public servants. Moreover, applying the said GO to Khadeer’s case, which happened 10 years prior to its promulgation, was improper, Kaur contended.
The bench directed Khadeer and his wife to make a fresh representation to the authorities within two weeks and directed the state government to consider and pass a reasoned order on this application within six weeks.
–Agencies