The Bombay high court has recently dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking direction for government to appoint CBI to conduct investigation into the letters written by politicians to the
The Bombay high court has recently dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking direction for government to appoint CBI to conduct investigation into the letters written by politicians to the President requesting him to accept mercy plea of 1993 serial blasts case convict Yakub Memon and commute his death sentence.
The PIL was filed by Chandrapakash Singh, which said that he came to know from various news articles that some MLAs, MLCs and municipal corporators have written letters to President requesting him to commute Yakub Memon’s death sentence to life. The reason for this request is apparently that he had surrendered before the Indian authorities and hence he should not be given death punishment.
According to the petitioner, all the rights as per the provision have been given to Memon to produce all the documents and also lead the evidence and after a long trial he was held guilty and awarded death sentence by the trial court and the punishment was upheld by the Supreme Court. It was also contended by the petitioner that the President and the governor of Maharashtra also agreed that Memon should be hanged.
Advocate Satish Mishra on behalf of Singh had also argued that when all the due process was followed and complete chance was given to Memon to defend himself then it was not correct on part of these politicians to write to the President and hence they should be issued show cause notices and CBI should conduct an investigation into this.
However, the division bench of Justice V.M. Kanade and Justice A.K. Memon after hearing arguments observed, “In our view, there is no public interest involved and this court cannot give such directions to the government to appoint CBI to conduct investigation in respect of letter dated July 28, 2015.”
The bench said that it could not direct the government to issue a show cause notice against the MLAs, MLCs and municipal counsellor, who had written a letter to the President. “We are not inclined to entertain this plea. The PIL is dismissed,” said the court.
