New Delhi: Serving imprisonment punishment on death row for over past 2 decades, a prisoner is likely to get mercy, because of a chance discovery that while committing dreadful murder of seven persons in 1994, he was a juvenile, who could not be awarded the extreme penalty under law.
On February 19, 1998, a Pune trial court had awarded capital punishment to him for the gruesome murder of five women and two toddlers at a flat in Kothrud in suburban Pune on August 24, 1994.
A year later, the Bombay high court upheld the conviction and sentence, pushing him nearer to the gallows.
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The Supreme Court on September 5, 2000 dismissed his appeal and on November 24, 2000, his plea for review was dismissed in chambers by the SC judges. However, nearly a decade and half later on September 2, 2014, the SC felt that death row convicts should get one more chance to argue their cases in open court. It ruled that all petitions seeking review of judgments upholding death penalty should be heard in open court.
Since no juvenile can be awarded death penalty, the SC on January 29 this year sent his application to the principal district and session judge at Pune to inquire whether the convict was a juvenile in August 1994. It sought a report within six weeks.