Agreeing to hear plea of the convict, a bench of justices P Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi issued notice to the Uttar Pradesh government.
It asked the state government to file its reply within four weeks on the plea of Mubarak who pleaded for sympathetic treatment from the court citing its verdict in a case.
"In this era of fast changing criminal jurisprudence and especially the reformative theory, life convicts deserve sympathetic treatment," the petitioner said in his plea.
Mubarak was arrested along with another person in a murder case in 1977. He was later sentenced to death by the lower court.
He then approached the Allahabad High Court which upheld his conviction but commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.
The state government then moved the apex court which dismissed the plea for enhancement of the punishment to sentence of death in 1985.
