Kalam rejects murderer's plea

President APJ Abdul Kalam rejected the mercy petition of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, accused of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl, setting off yet another debate on capital punishment.

Chatterjee has been in jail for the past 10 years as the legal case against him dragged on. He was sentenced to death by a Calcutta sessions court on August 12, 1991 and the order was confirmed by the Calcutta High Court. The Supreme Court had also upheld the conviction and sentence in January 1994.

The case took a political turn with the Trinamool Congress supporting his plea for clemency and several leaders in the ruling Left Front demanding that a psychopath like him be condemned to death because civil society was in danger because of people like him.

In a campaign that virtually turned into baying for Chatterjee's blood, CPI(M) leaders found they could not express their personal views on the continuance of capital punishment in the country.

West Bengal Left Front chairman Biman Bose said the law should take its own course as long as there was capital punishment in the country, but added he preferred a debate on capital punishment per se.

But those opposed to capital punishment like film-maker Aparna Sen and Magsaysay awardee litterateur Mahasweta Devi, passionately regretted the President's decision.

"This is really sad. Though it must have been a tough decision for the President to make, it is unfortunate that the big debate on capital punishment was not allowed to move ahead," Sen said.

Pointing out that she had been pleading not for the clemency of the condemned man, but for the abolition of capital punishment, Sen said, "Chatterjee did commit a heinous crime and all of us admit it. But to kill a man because he has killed someone else certainly is not a solution."

Echoing her views, social activist and writer Mahasweta Devi said she was not questioning the President's decision, but "tell me, after Dhananjay's execution was announced, has the number of rapes and crimes against women gone down? An alarming number of gangrapes were reported from West Bengal just after that... Is anyone afraid of capital punishment," she asked.

Giving an instance of a 1997 case when the President had considered the clemency petition of four rape and murder convicts from Andhra Pradesh on her request, she said they had undergone imprisonment and were leading normal lives with their families today. Devi said she would continue voicing protest against capital punishment till the last day of her life.

Since his death sentence in 1992 by the sessions court for the gruesome act, Dhananjoy has successfully used loopholes in the legal procedures to escape the gallows for over a decade.

Chatterjee had once before escaped the noose by a whisker in 1994, when he got a stay on his execution from the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court.

He had moved the high court a day before February 25, 1994, the date fixed for his execution and obtained a stay from the court on the ground that he had moved a mercy petition before the President on February 17.

On the same day (February 24) his wife Purnima had moved the apex court seeking a stay on execution on the ground that she be allowed time to move a mercy petition before the President.

The apex court granted the stay for a week till March 4 and a communique was received by the West Bengal judicial department the same evening about the stay, just hours before the scheduled execution at 4.30 am the next morning.

He managed two more extensions on the stay by the high court and then an unlimited stay till disposal of his petition by the President, suppressing the fact that his wife had also obtained a stay on his execution from the apex court giving the same reason, public prosecutor for state before the high court, Kaji Safiullah.

While the mercy petition was rejected by the President on June 23, 1994, the state government did not take any step to vacate the stay by the high court, till it came to the notice of a judicial department officer in October 2003.