July 31, 2015

Two possible reasons why Supreme Court could not postpone execution of death warrant for even 14 days :- 1)

1) Lawyers who woke up Supreme Court Judges at midnight may have good hope that court will extend time to execute death warrants by 14 days.

Because general law is : When Court fixes that something to be done in certain time, then court can extended if there are sufficient reasons to do so.

2) As per media reports :

A) One reason was that "Second Clemency petition has been rejected by President just now. Thereafter 14 days time should be given from now on.

This argument presuppose that any number of clemency petitions can be filed and After last clemency petition is rejected, 14 days should be given.

This argument did not stand.

Because there is no law that any number of clemency petitions can be filed after main clemency is rejected.

Secondly, If you accept this argument, and give 14 days, than another clemency petition can be filed after 10 days... And after its rejection another 14 days.....etc...so on..

The argument failed.

2) Second argument was, 14 days time should be given so that relatives can meet.

This argument failed because, the Supreme Court was told that relatives were already there and the warrant was issued 90 days ago... Ample time was already given.

So this argument also failed.

The Judges must have felt that same arguments are being repeated again and again and no plausible ground is made out to extend warrant by 14 days which could if done, indirectly  meant almost setting aside warrant, a prayer which was rejected in afternoon.  It was not possible for judges since no good reason was pointed out to them.

(This views are personal and based on media reports. I may be wrong)

Haresh Raichura
31/7/2015