Pending mercy petition

Pending mercy petition

As reported by the National Crime Records Bureau a total of 117, 97 and 125 inmates were awarded capital punishment during the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 respectively.

As per available records, there are five cases of mercy petitions, involving nine convicts, pending under Article 72 of the Constitution of India.


Data of prisons having facility for hanging convicts on death row is not maintained centrally. Prisons and its related matter is a State subject under the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India.

As reported by the National Crime Records Bureau, the number of convicts executed during the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 are 00, 01 and 01 respectively.

*******

Bail to Samjhauta Express blast accused

The Punjab and Haryana High Court passed an order granting conditional bail to Naba Kumar Sarkar @ Swami Aseemanand on 28.08.2014 in the Samjhauta Express Blast Case. However, the certified copy of the said order was issued by the court only on 01.05.2015. The NIA examined the feasibility of filing a SLP and decided that there were no grounds to challenge the Order in the Supreme Court. However, Naba Kumar Sarkar @ Swami Aseemanand continues to remain in jail since he did not comply with the conditions of bail specified in order dated 28.08.2014.

Besides, the Government did not find it fit to challenge the order dated 21.03.2014, whereby bail was granted to the two accused in Mecca Masjid Blast case of May 2007 viz Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma, on grounds of parity since the order dated 03.06.2012 and 27.06.2013 whereby bail was granted to Bharat Mohan Lal @ Bharat Bhai and Tejaram Parmar had not been challenged by the prosecution. However, both the accused continue to be in jail as they are also accused in other cases wherein they have been denied bail.

****

Status of Natgrid

The NATGRID is conceived to be a framework which will leverage Information Technology to connect approved User Agencies (security/law enforcement) with designated Data providers (Airlines, Banks, SEBI, Railway, Telecom etc.) with a view to enhance the country’s counter-terrorism capability. The platform envisages approved operating procedures and oversight mechanisms to facilitate access between users and providers to enable them to analyze and disseminate information/intelligence for synergizing efforts to counter-terrorism related activity. The total expenditure upto 31.03.2015 on NATGRID project is Rs.98.14 Crore. Work on both the physical infrastructure and a technical component is in progress.


****