The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the Bombay High Court verdict of 2019, which set aside the death penalty awarded to two convicts for raping and murdering a BPO employee in Pune in 2007.
The order was passed by the Bench of Justice Abhay Oka, Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Justice AG Masih.
On July 29, 2019, the High Court had commuted the death sentence awarded to Pradeep Kokade and Purshottam Borate, directing the convicts to serve a prison term of 35 years, including remissions.
The Division Bench of Justice BP Dharmadikari and Justice Swapna Joshi passed the order on petitions filed by Kokade and Borate, seeking a stay on their execution, originally scheduled for June 24, 2019.
The petitioners contended that excessive and unexplained delay of over four years (1,509 days) in the execution of their death sentence had caused unnecessary & unavoidable pain, suffering, and mental torment to them. This constituted cruel & unusual punishment, and was violative of Article 21 (right to life) of the Indian Constitution, the convicts argued before the High Court.
Appearing for the convicts, Advocate Yug Chaudhry apprised the High Court that there had been a delay in issuance of the warrants for the execution of the death penalty.
In November 2007, Borate, a cab driver, along with his friend Kokade, had kidnapped, raped and murdered a 22-year-old woman, working with a BPO, while she was returning home at night. They were convicted and sentenced to death in 2012.
The High Court and the Supreme Court later upheld the death penalty. Their mercy petitions were rejected in April 2016 by the Maharashtra Governor and the President in May 2017.
On April 10, 2019, a Pune sessions court had issued warrants setting their date of execution as June 24, 2019.
The convicts challenged this order in the High Court, which commuted their death sentence to life imprisonment in July 2019.
The convicts had also argued that some documents such as the trial court’s judgment as well as the report about lack of criminal antecedents were not forwarded by the jail authorities in time before the state made the recommendation on their mercy pleas before the governor.
The allegations were refuted by both the Central government and the State of Maharashtra. The lawyers representing the Union of India and the State of Maharashtra contended that they had pursued every course of action available and there had not been any delay, much less deliberate or inordinate delay, in either intimating the (convicts) or in forwarding their documents to the government of India, or in considering their mercy petitions or taking steps towards the execution of both the convicts.
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