Justice at last

INVOKING its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has intervened to do ‘complete justice’ by ordering the release of AG Perarivalan, who has spent over 30 years in jail after being convicted for his role in the 1991 assassination of former PM Rajiv Gandhi. The SC Bench sternly observed that the inexplicable delay in deciding remission was inexcusable as it contributed to ‘adverse physical conditions and mental distress to the inmates’.

The obvious question is: Who was/were responsible for the ‘inexplicable, inexcusable’ delay? There is no doubt that the Centre and the Tamil Nadu Government, along with the Governor, took an inordinately long time to make vital decisions pertaining to the case. The sequence of events speaks for itself. It was in February 2014 that the SC commuted Perarivalan’s death sentence to life imprisonment, along with that of two other prisoners (Santhan and Murugan), on the grounds of an 11-year delay by the Centre in taking a call on their mercy pleas. In December 2015, Perarivalan filed a petition under Article 161 of the Constitution for remission of his sentence; almost three years later, the state Cabinet passed a resolution recommending his release and sent it to the Governor. A sense of urgency was again conspicuous by its absence as the Governor forwarded Perarivalan’s petition, along with the Cabinet’s recommendation, to the President as late as January 2021. The court has rightly wondered why the recommendation was referred to the President, even though Article 161 makes the Cabinet’s advice binding on the Governor in matters relating to commutation/remission of sentences. The Governor chose not to exercise his power under Article 161 and, what’s worse, the Centre defended his decision.

The landmark verdict should pave the way for the release of convicts who are languishing behind bars under similar circumstances, including Perarivalan’s fellow prisoners in the assassination case. It’s also a wake-up call for the executive to get its act together. The CJI, NV Ramana, was spot on when he recently cited ‘non-performance by various wings of the executive’ as one of the major reasons for the ever-increasing burden on the courts.