Recent developments have brought the spotlight back on the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, with authorities passing the buck on who will take a decision on pleas for their release.
Background
• Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in a bomb explosion at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu (TN) in 1991.
• Seven convicts are serving life terms in the case. In 1999, Supreme Court (SC) sentenced four of them to death and the other three to life imprisonment.
• In 2000, the death sentence of one, Nalini, was commuted to life. In 2014, SC commuted the other three death sentences, including that of Perarivalan.
• In 2015, Perarivalan filed a pardon plea before the TN Governor. In September, 2018, SC asked the Governor to decide the pardon plea as he “deemed fit”.
• Following SC order, TN Cabinet had recommended to the Governor (under Article 161) to release Perarivalan and six others.
• Governor, however, had not acted on the recommendation for over two years, prompting Perarivalan to approach SC about the delay.
• Recently, Centre assured SC that TN Governor was set to take a call on release of Perarivalan. However, later on the Governor’s office left a decision on pardon of all the convicts in the case to President.
President.
• Article 72 empowers the president to grant pardons to persons who have been tried and convicted of any offence in all cases where the o Punishment or sentence is for an offence against a Union Law; o Punishment or sentence is by a court martial (military court); and o Sentence is a sentence of death
• Pardoning power of the President includes the following- o Pardon- it removes both the sentence and the conviction and completely absolves the convict from all sentences, punishments and disqualifications.
Commutation- It denotes the substitution of one form of punishment for a lighter form.
Remission- It implies reducing the period of sentence without changing its character.
Respite- It denotes awarding a lesser sentence in place of one originally awarded due to some special fact, such as the physical and disability of a convict or the pregnancy of a woman offender.
Reprieve- It implies a stay of the execution of a sentence (especially that of death) for a temporary period.
• Under Article 161, the governor of a state also possesses the pardoning power.
• But, the pardoning power of the governor differs from that of the President in following two respects:
President can pardon sentences inflicted by court martial (military courts) while the governor cannot.
President can pardon death sentence while governor cannot.
Even if a state law prescribes death sentence, the power to grant pardon lies with the President and not the governor.
• Governor can also grant pardons, reprieves, respites and remission of punishment or suspend, remit and commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence against a state law.
• However, the governor can suspend, remit or commute a death sentence.
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