The immediate effect of the apex court's order was on three prisoners-- Murugan, Santhan and Arivu-- whose death sentence was commutted to life on February 18 by it as the Centre's petition mentioned only their names but a bench headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam allowed it to file a seperate application on the remaining four prisoners.
As the apex court has raised questions and agreed to examine in detail the procedure adopted by the state government in deciding to release them, the seven convicts will remain in jail till further orders.
The bench, also comprising justices Ranjan Gogoi and N V Ramana, at the begining of proceedings expressed surprise on how the state government claimed to have fulfilled all the procedures within a day after the apex court commuted the death sentence of three prisoners.
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"Our judgement was pronounced on Tuesday morning and it was available at 5PM and the newspaper reports came out only on Wednesday," the bench said while spelling out the procedures required for release of the convicts.
"There are several procedural steps required to be followed and an application has to be filed before a presiding judge of a competent court for remitting sentence which was not done," it said.
Solicitor General Mohan Parasarn then said the procedures were not followed and the decision was taken in a hurry by the state government.