New Delhi:
The Supreme Court will today take up the plea of four associates of sandalwood bandit Veerappan who are on death row at the Belgaum Central Jail in Karnataka.
On Monday, a bench headed by the Chief Justice of India Justice Altamas Kabir had stayed their execution till Wednesday. 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 mercy petitions pending since 2004 were rejected last week by President Pranab Mukherjee. The top court will decide today whether to send this case to another bench which is hearing similar cases.
The four convicts are Tamils settled for years in Karnataka's border village of Maatili.
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.