IMPORTANT POINT
In any case, the President or the Governor, as the case may be, has to take cognizance of the relevant facts and then decide whether a case is made out for exercise of power under Article 72 or 161 of the Constitution.

JUDGMENT

G. S. Singhvi, J.:- Leave granted.

2. The question which arises for consideration in this appeal is whether 12 years delay in the disposal of the petition filed by the appellant under Article 72 of the Constitution was sufficient for commutation of the sentence of death into life imprisonment and the Division Bench of the Gauhati High Court committed an error by dismissing the writ petition filed by him.

3. The appellant was prosecuted for an offence under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on the allegation that he had killed Rajen Das, Secretary of Assam Motor Workers Union on 24.12.1990. He was convicted by Sessions Judge, Kamrup, Guwahati (hereinafter referred to as, ‘the trial Court’) in Sessions Case No. 80(K) of 1990 vide judgment dated 11.11.1997 and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

4. While he was on bail in Sessions Case No. 80(K) of 1990, the appellant is said to have killed Hare Kanta Das (a truck owner). He was tried in Sessions Case No. 114(K) of 1996 and was convicted by the trial Court and was sentenced to death on the premise that the murder was most foul and gruesome.

5. The appellant challenged the judgments of the trial Court in Appeal Nos. 254(J) of 1997 and 2(J) of 1998. Both the appeals were dismissed by the High Court vide judgments dated 3.2.1998 and 12.12.1998 and the sentence of death awarded in Sessions Case No. 114(K) of 1996 was confirmed.

6. The appeal filed by the appellant against the confirmation of the sentence of death by the High Court was dismissed by this Court vide judgment – Mahendra Nath Das v. State of Assam (1999) 5 SCC 102. While dealing with the appellant’s contention that the extreme penalty of death should not have been imposed by the trial Court and confirmed by the High Court, this Court made the following observations:

“Now coming to the facts of this case, the circumstances of the case unmistakably show that the murder committed was extremely gruesome, heinous, cold-blooded and cruel. The manner in which the murder was committed was atrocious and shocking. After giving blows with a sword to the deceased when he fell down the appellant amputated his hand, severed his head from the body, carried it through the road to the police station (majestically as the trial court puts it) by holding it in one hand and the blood-dripping weapon in the other hand. Does it not depict the extreme depravity of the appellant? In our view it does.

The mitigating circumstances pointed out by the learned counsel for the appellant are, though the appellant himself did not state any mitigating circumstances when enquired about the same by the learned Sessions Judge, that the appellant is a young man of 33 years and having three unmarried sisters and aged parents and he was not well at that time. These circumstances when weighed against the aggravating circumstances leave us in no doubt that this case falls within the category of rarest of rare cases. The trial court has correctly applied the principles in awarding the death sentence and the High Court has committed no error of law in confirming the same.

On these facts, declining to confirm the death sentence will, in our view, stultify the course of law and justice. In Govindaswami v. State of T.N.(1998) 4 SCC 531, Mukherjee, J. speaking for the Court observed, “If, in spite thereof, we commute the death sentence to life imprisonment we will be yielding to spasmodic sentiment, unregulated benevolence and misplaced sympathy.”

7. Soon after the judgment of this Court, the appellant submitted a petition to the President under Article 72 of the Constitution and prayed for commutation of the sentence of death into life imprisonment. A similar petition was filed by him under Article 161 of the Constitution. The Governor of Assam rejected his petition vide order dated 7.4.2000. The mercy petition addressed to the President was forwarded by the Government of Assam to the Ministry of Home Affairs sometime in June, 2000. After a lot o