Supreme Court of India(SCI)extends stay on release of Rajiv case convicts Friday April 25,2014

In a major setback to the Tamil Nadu government the Supreme Court on Friday April 25,2014 extended the stay of an order passed on February 19 directing the release of 7 life convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. 

On February 20, 2014 the SC  had directed the Tamil Nadu Govt to maintain status quo in itsdecision to release the 3 convicts -Sriharan alies Murugan, T.Suthendraraja alia Santhan and A.G. Perarivalan allias Arivu,whose death sentence was commuted to life term on Feb 18,2014 as well as in the release of 4 other convicts Nalini, Robert Pious, Jayakumar and Ravichandran.

 On Friday April 25,2014 the SC said the interim order of staying the release would continue till the final decision was rendered by the 5-judge constitution Bench. 

A Bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N.V. Ramana, while extending the stay, referred to a Constitution Bench the issues raised by the Centre on the powers of the State Govt to release the convicts after the same had been rejected by the President or the Governor in exercise of their clemency powers. 

The Bench gave this verdict on the writ petition filed by the UPA II Govt challenging the TN Govt's decision to release the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. 

The Bench framed 7 questions to be considered by the Constitution Bench, including -

• whether the State could exercise its remission powers to release a life convict after the same had been exercised by the President or the Governor or by the apex court by commuting the death sentence into life term.; 

• what was the meaning of `consultation’ contemplated in Section 432 Cr.P.C. and whether it would mean concurrence with the Central government; 

• whether imprisonment for life would mean imprisonment for the rest of life without remission; 

• whether the court could evolve a special category of sentence in certain cases and substitute death sentence into life sentence for rest of life and make such an order beyond the power of remission and 

• which was the appropriate government, either the State or the Centre or there could be two parallel government which could exercise the power of remission.