ORDER :- In these three writ petitions filed by Munawar Harun Shah (original accused No. 4), Shantaram Kanhoji Jagtap (original accused No. 3) and Dilip Dhyanoba Sutar (original accused No. 2) respectively a fervent appeal has been made by counsel appearing for each one of them that their death sentences should be commuted to life imprisonment.

2. It is pointed out that the concerned offences were committed between January 1976 and March 1977, that each one of them was sentenced to death by the trial Court on 28th September, 1978; that their sentences were confirmed by the Bombay High Court on 6th April 1979 and that their Special Leave Petitions against their convictions and sentences were dismissed by this Court on 17th November, 1980. In other words, the death penalty has been brooding over each ones head for an excruciatingly long period of about five years. So far as Munawar Harun Shah is concerned, it is urged that he was so to say a junior member of the gang of the killers and perhaps did not take part in the actual killing and it is pointed out that since his conviction he is writing Koran in Marathi and is also learning Arabic language and Homoeopathy. So far as Shantaram J