NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Center to submit within two weeks its affidavit on the plea of Balwant Singh Rajoana, convict in the 1995 assassination case of then Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh, seeking reduction of his death sentence to life imprisonment due to delay in disposal of his mercy plea.
Rajoana has been in prison for more than 29 years, where he has been on death row for more than 15 years.
“Why haven’t you filed your counter-affidavit yet?” A bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and Vijay Bishnoi asked the lawyer representing the Centre.
The lawyer said that they want to place some documents before the court in a sealed envelope.
“You can file your counter-affidavit otherwise his allegations are indisputable,” the judge said, adding: “You can file your affidavit with whatever you want to say.”
Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who appeared for Rajoana, said the mercy petition filed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee on behalf of the petitioner in March 2012, is still pending.
He said the Supreme Court had said in 2023 that the authorities should consider the mercy petition.
Rohatgi referred to the Supreme Court order issued on September 24 last year which stated that no further application for adjournment of the case at the request of the defendants would be entertained.
The court gave the center’s lawyer two weeks to submit the statement and made it clear that no more time would be given.
The Supreme Court had earlier asked the Center to take a decision on Rajoana’s mercy plea.
The Center then pointed out the sensitivity of the matter and said that the mercy petition was under consideration.
In September 2024, the Supreme Court sought responses from the Centre, Punjab government and the Chandigarh Union Territory administration on Rajoana’s plea.
Former Punjab Chief Minister Singh and 16 others were killed in an explosion at the entrance of the Civil Secretariat in Chandigarh on August 31, 1995. Rajoana was sentenced to death by a special court in July 2007.
Rajoana’s plea sought a direction for his release.
On May 3, 2023, the Supreme Court refused to commute his death sentence, saying that the competent authority could deal with his plea for mercy.
In his new petition filed in 2024, Rajoana highlighted that he spent 28.8 years in prison, of which he spent more than 15 years as a death row convict.
He said that the South Sudan General Assembly filed a mercy petition under Article 72 in March 2012, seeking clemency on his behalf.
The petition said that more than a year had passed since the Supreme Court directed the competent authority, in due course, to deal with the mercy petition filed on his behalf and take a further decision.
It referred to the Supreme Court’s April 2023 order in a separate matter, wherein the court directed all states and competent authorities to decide on the pending mercy petitions at the earliest and without any undue delay.
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