All eyes in the Supreme Court on Monday are likely to rest on court room No 3, where 1993 blasts convict Yakub Memon’s plea against his execution is scheduled for hearing. Among those who are likely to be there to watch the proceedings is eminent lawyer Ram Jethmalani. It will be exactly eight years to the day Yakub was sentenced to death by a Tada court.
A law university has sought to raise the question of all required checks in a death penalty case not being followed and senior counsel T R Andhyarujina is expected to argue the point. The main ground for a stay of the impending execution is that the governor of Maharashtra has not yet decided on the mercy plea filed by Yakub from Nagpur Central Jail, after his curative plea was rejected by the Supreme Court.
The other point is that a death warrant needs to be issued 14 days before the date of execution and the date ought not be fixed prior to the rejection of the curative petition. The plea is based on five main grounds, including the two, and one on Yakub’s health, which took a turn for the worse with schizophrenia while, said his lawyers.
The plea before the governor is a 2,000-page document as is the current plea before the SC. Yakub has said that the mercy plea rejected by the President was filed by his brother Suleiman; so, he can still file one personally.
Prominent citizens have taken up the cause against his death sentence by filing a fresh plea before the President to pardon Yakub or at least defer the hanging.
Mahesh Bhat is one of the signatories to the mercy plea, along with Naseeruddin Shah. Eminent jurists like K T S Tulsi and Ram Jethmalani, as well as CPM politburo member Brinda Karat and Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson and social activist Tushar Gandhi, want the President to reconsider the rejection of pardon for Yakub. Bhat said, “A mercy plea is a prayer made in private. We believe anyone sentenced to death has the right to get the sentence commuted.” Another signatory said the issue now is also the larger one of changing the perception of the death penalty across the world and deferring Yakub’s execution date may be considered appropriate.
On Saturday, as Yakub’s wife Rahin said he told her on Thursday that he still had faith in the courts and the Constitution , governor C Vidyasagar Rao held consultations with state home and law department officials on Yakub’s mercy petition submitted by the younger brother of absconding blast master mind, Tiger Memon.