The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the death warrants to execute a young couple, Shabnam and Saleem for the murder of seven members, including her aged parents and a 10-month-old infant, of her family in 2008 in Uttar Pradesh.
The stay by a vacation bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and U.U. Lalit comes shortly after a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu confirmed the death penalty, calling it a 'rarest of rare' crime and a brutal case of parricide.
The vacation bench stopped the execution process on a writ petition filed by both Shabnam, a teacher and now the mother of a seven-year-old boy, and the National Law University, Delhi, through the Death Penalty Litigation Clinic.
The petition has challenged the constitutionality of the death warrants issued by the Sessions Court, Amroha, on May 21 after the Supreme Court upheld the capital punishment.
The petition contended that the death warrants violated the fundamental rights of the prisoners and little regard was paid to the procedure for its issuance.
The petition urged that death row convicts have a fundamental right to be represented by their counsel and be given sufficient notice and opportunity to be heard before death warrant is issued by the Sessions Court. None of this was followed in this case.
“Another egregious violation of the fundamental right to life is that the death warrants do not mention the exact date when the execution will be carried out. Instead, it requires the jail authorities to carry out the execution ‘as soon as possible’. Shabnam and Saleem have been put under constant fear of their death due to this,” a statement issued by the varsity's Death Penalty Litigation Clinic said.
The statement said that this “stay is an assurance to death row prisoners that their lives are not subject to the whims of the State”.
The bench has posted the case for detailed arguments on May 27.
Senior advocates Anand Grover and Raju Ramachandran appeared on behalf of Shabnam and the National Law University (Death Penalty Litigation Clinic), respectively.
A trial court had convicted and sentenced the duo to death in July 2008. The decision was upheld by the Allahabad High Court in April 2013.
In his recent judgment, Chief Justice Dattu observed that the fact that an educated teacher from a civilised family committed this crime and showed no remorse afterwards by itself makes it a 'rarest of rare' crime deserving the death penalty.
