With barely 24-hours left before the hanging of Jinda and Sukha, the killers of former army chief Gen. Arun Shridhar Vaidya, the supreme court of India October 8 dismissed a petition seeking stay of the execution of the condemned prisoners at a Pune jail in western India,
A division bench comprising Justice A.M. Ahmedi and Justice K. Ramaswamy dismissed as not maintainable the petition moved by the capital’s maximum security Tihar jail under trial, Karamjit, holding that third parties had no locus standi to challenge the conviction and sentence in criminal proceedings.
The apex court has directed the registry to scrutinize all similar petitions seeking stay of Friday’s hanging, in the light of the order on third party locus standi, before accepting and listing them for consideration before the court.
Immediately after the order was pronounced in a jam-packed court in the presence of some Sikh leaders, the registry went ahead with the scrutiny of petitions,
Before the president, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma a mercy petition was moved by the Sikh forum through its convenor Lt. Gen, J.S. Aurora which sought pardon for the two convicts, or in the alternative, a remission of the death sentences. Although a valiant effort was made by the Akali leaders they were refused entry into the president’s compound and it was assumed that their petitions fell on deaf ears.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 16, 1992
