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Yakub Abdul Razak Memon v. State of Maharashtra, Thr. the Secretary, Home Department and Others

Writ Petition (Criminal) · Neutral citation not assigned (Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 129 of 2015, order of 29 July 2015)Decided 29 Jul 2015
Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 129 of 2015
Justice Dipak Misra · Justice Prafulla C. Pant · Justice Amitava Roy

Background

The petitioner, convicted and sentenced to death for the 1993 Bombay blasts (confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2013, with his review and curative petitions already dismissed and his mercy petitions rejected by the Governor and President), filed a writ petition under Article 32 to stop his execution scheduled for 30 July 2015. A two-judge bench had earlier split on the petition, one judge dismissed it outright, while the other held the curative petition's own dismissal was procedurally defective and needed to be reconsidered, so the matter was placed before a three-judge bench to resolve the disagreement and decide the writ petition on merits.

Decision Breakdown

The Court first held that the curative petition had been validly decided by the three senior-most judges of the Court as required under the Rupa Ashok Hurra guidelines and the Supreme Court Rules, rejecting the view that it needed to include the judges who delivered the original appellate judgment (who had since retired). It then rejected each of the petitioner's remaining grounds: the 90-day gap in the death warrant and its service did not breach the 14-day minimum notice principle from Shatrughan Chauhan; the petitioner had already been given adequate opportunity to pursue legal remedies, including a 10-day oral review hearing; and a pending second mercy petition to the Governor did not by itself bar execution of an otherwise valid warrant. Finding no procedural infirmity in the issuance of the death warrant, the Court dismissed the writ petition.

Lesson Learnt

Once a death sentence has been confirmed on appeal and review and curative remedies have been properly exhausted, courts will scrutinise but not easily interfere with the execution process on procedural grounds alone: the safeguards around notice and opportunity to be heard exist to ensure a fair process, not to create an indefinite right to further delay.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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