The Supreme Court on Tuesday commuted death sentence of three men, convicted for killing former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, to life in jail.
The trio had pleaded for the commutation of their death sentences on grounds of inordinate delay in deciding their mercy petitions.
A bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam, Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh pronounced the verdict.
The three assassins – V Sriharan alias Murugan, AG Perarivlan alias Arivu and T Suthendraraja alias Santhan had sought the commutation of their death sentence to life imprisonment on account of the inordinate delay of nearly 11 years in deciding their mercy petitions.
On February 4, 2014, the Central government had opposed the plea stating that the death convicts did not go through torture, agony and dehumanising experience during pendency of their mercy pleas.
Admitting that there has been delay in deciding the mercy petitions, the government, however, had contended that the delay was not unreasonable, unexplainable and unconscionable to commute death penalty.