Supreme Court bench to hear Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has notified the setting up of a five-judge Constitution Bench to hear from July 15 issues relating to the release of death row convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

In 2014, a three-judge bench had stayed the release of seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi case, viz Murugan, Santhan, Periarivalan (whose death sentence was commuted to life sentence) and that of Nalini, Robert Pius, Jayakumar and Ravichandran, serving life term in the case.

Pursuant to the top court’s order on February 18, 2014 commuting death sentence into life term of Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, the Tamil Nadu government in exercise of its remission powers directed their release along with four others.

The Union government got a stay on their release contending that in cases investigated by the CBI, only the Centre had the power of remission and not the state government concerned. Accepting the Centre’s stand, a three-judge bench referred the matter for adjudication by a five-judge Constitution bench.

It said, “The issue of such a nature has been raised for the first time in this court, which has wide ramification in determining the scope of application of power of remission by the Executive, both the Centre and the state. Accordingly, we refer this matter to the Constitution bench to decide the issue pertaining to whether once power of remission under Article 72 or 161 of the Constitution or by this court exercising Constitutional power under Article 32, is there any scope for further consideration for remission by the Executive.”

The bench framed seven questions to be considered by the Constitution bench, including whether the state could exercise its remission powers to release a life convict after the same had been exercised by the President or the governor or by the top court by commuting the death sentence into life term; what was the meaning of “consultation” contemplated in Section 432 CrPC and whether it would mean concurrence with the Central government; whether imprisonment for life would mean imprisonment for the rest of life without remission; whether the court could evolve a special category of sentence in certain cases and substitute death sentence into life sentence for rest of life and make such an order beyond the power of remission and which was the appropriate government, either the state or the Centre or there could be two parallel governments which could exercise the power of remission.

In July last, another bench headed by former CJI R.M. Lodha restrained all states from releasing life-term convicts exercising their remission powers and issued notice to all states. The hearing to begin on July 15 will focus on issues relating to remission powers.