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Yakub Abdul Razak Memon v. State of Maharashtra and Anr.

Writ Petition (Criminal) · Neutral citation not assigned (Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 135 of 2015)Decided 30 Jul 2015
Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 135 of 2015
Justice Dipak Misra · Justice Prafulla C. Pant · Justice Amitava Roy

Background

Yakub Memon was convicted in the 1993 Bombay bomb blasts case and sentenced to death, with the sentence confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2013; his review petition and curative petition had already been dismissed, and his mercy petitions to both the Governor of Maharashtra and the President of India had been rejected. With his execution scheduled for 7:00 a.m. on 30 July 2015, his counsel filed this fresh writ petition at around 3:15 a.m. that day, arguing that he had been denied the mandatory minimum 14-day gap between communication of the rejection of his mercy petition and the scheduled execution (as laid down in Shatrughan Chauhan v. Union of India), and sought a stay.

Decision Breakdown

The Court held that this was effectively a repeat of an identical plea it had already rejected the previous day in a related writ petition (W.P.(Crl) No. 129 of 2015, dismissed 29.07.2015). It found that the petitioner's first mercy petition (filed by his brother in 2013) had been rejected as far back as April 2014 and duly communicated, giving him ample time to make peace with his situation and arrange family visits, satisfying the purpose behind the 14-day rule. The Court reasoned that allowing every subsequent, repetitive mercy petition to trigger a fresh mandatory 14-day notice period would let a condemned prisoner indefinitely postpone a lawfully issued death warrant, which would be "nothing but a travesty of justice." Finding no infirmity in the death warrant or the process followed, the Court dismissed the writ petition.

Lesson Learnt

The 14-day minimum-notice safeguard between rejection of a mercy petition and execution exists to give a condemned prisoner a genuine first opportunity to prepare and meet family: it cannot be used to manufacture indefinite delay by filing successive mercy petitions, each demanding its own fresh notice period.

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

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