New Delhi:
Fearing that their execution could be as early as Sunday, four associates of notorious sandalwood smuggler Veerappan on Saturday appealed in the Supreme Court for a stay. The top court declined to hear the petition, saying there was no proof that the date of their hanging had been fixed.
The court said the petition, filed by advocate Shamik Narain on behalf of the four, can be heard at a later date.
The four convicts - Veerappan's elder brother Gnanaprakash, Simon, Meesekar Madaiah and Bilavendran - have been on death row since 2004, when the Supreme Court sentenced them to death for killing 22 policemen and forest personnel from Tamil Nadu in a landmine blast at Palar, Karnataka.
Their mercy petitions were rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday.
The four convicts are lodged in a jail in Belgaum, Karnataka.
A court in Mysore had in 2001 sentenced them to life term, which was enhanced to death penalty by the Supreme Court. Their gang leader, Veerappan, was killed in a gun battle with the Tamil Nadu police in 2004.
The President's refusal to commute their sentence to life came within days of his rejecting the mercy petition of Afzal Guru, who was convicted for his role in the attack on Parliament in 2001. Guru was hanged at Delhi's Tihar Jail on February 9.