New Delhi:
The Supreme Court today stayed the execution of four aides of Sandalwood bandit Veerappan till Wednesday. President Pranab Mukherjee had rejected their mercy petitions last week.
The four - Gnana Prakasam, Simon, Meesakaara Madiah and Bilavendran - have been on death row for nine years and have requested the Supreme Court to commute their death sentence to life imprisonment since there has been an inordinate delay in deciding on their mercy petition.
They are accused of killing 22 policemen and forest officials in a landmine blast in Palar, Karnataka in 1993. A Mysore court had in 2001 sentenced the men to life imprisonment, but the Supreme Court enhanced that to the death sentence in 2004. The mercy petition was moved the same year.
Their lawyer had on Saturday sought an urgent hearing at the Chief Justice's residence as the top court was closed that day, pleading there were reports that the four men would be hanged at the Belgaum, Karnataka jail where they are lodged, on Sunday. But the court rejected that appeal saying there was nothing to suggest that an execution had been slotted.
The four convicts are Tamils settled for years in Karnataka's border village of Maatili, which is tense ever since news came in about the mercy petition being rejected. The families have demanded a retrial; Gnana Prakasam's wife, Selva Mary, says, "He's innocent...He has never seen Veerappan."
The families have sought that the execution order be stayed till the Supreme Court decides on the petition of those convicted in the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The three convicts in that case too have challenged their death sentence, questioning the long delay in a decision on their mercy petitions.
In Tamil Nadu, Veerappan's wife, V Muthulakshmi, has demanded that the state government pass a resolution against the death sentence, like it had in the case of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination convicts. She plans a road blockade in protest against the death sentence today.
Muthulakshmi too was arrested in the landmine case, but was later acquitted. Her husband Veerappan lived in the jungles around Sathyamangalam that runs across parts of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala for decades, smuggling precious sandalwood and killing elephants for ivory. He reportedly killed more than 180 policemen and forest officials in all those years. Special teams were set up to hunt him down. He eluded them for years before being gunned down in 2004.