SC asks President to decide Rajoana’s mercy plea and then puts it on hold – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Within hours of passing an order asking the President to rule that Beant Singh has been sentenced to murder Balwant Singh Rajoana‘s plea for mercy, the Supreme Court withdrew its order after the Advocate General Tushar Mehta assured that he would inform the court about the Centre’s stand on the issue.
A bench of Justices BR Gavai, Prashant Kumar Mishra and KV Viswanathan had passed the order in the morning while noting that no one had appeared before the Center to assist the court in deciding the matter. She had instructed the secretary to the president to submit Rajoana’s file to her with a request that a decision be taken within two weeks.
SG assured SC that he would explain it at Centre’s Rajoana stand
Later in the day, Tushar Mehta requested the court not to pass any order and assured that he would inform the court about the Centre’s stand. The court accepted his plea and rescheduled the case for November 25.
Rajoana was convicted of the murder of Beant Singh, the then chief minister of Punjab, in 1995 and has been in prison for 29 years. He was sentenced to death by a court in 2007, but unlike other convicts, he did not challenge his conviction in the Supreme Court or the Supreme Court. A mercy petition for commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment was filed on his behalf by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and has been pending for over eight years.
The Home Ministry had written a letter to the Punjab Chief Secretary on September 27, 2019, proposing special remission and release of prisoners on the occasion of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, which also included his name. But his name was not sent in view of the co-accused’s pending appeals before the SC.