President Pranab Mukherjee rejected two mercy petitions in the last week of May, just two months before he completes his tenure.
The cases pertain to rape and murder of a 4-year-old girl by three men in Indore in 2012, and of a 22-year-old woman by two men in Pune in 2007.
The two pleas were received at the President’s secretariat in April and May. The convicts had urged the President to commute the death penalty awarded to them by local courts concerned and upheld by respective High Courts and finally by the Supreme Court.
In the gruesome rape and murder case of Indore, Jitendra alias Jeetu, Babu alias Ketan and Sanni alias Devendra were handed down death sentence by a city court a year after the crime was committed. The sentence was upheld by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 2014 and by the SC on January 6, 2015.
Mr. Mukherjee rejected their mercy petition on May 25, a Rashtrapati Bhavan communique said. The convicts had kidnapped the child from outside her relative’s house in Indore. They then sexually assaulted, strangled her to death and dumped the body in a drain.
In the Pune case, the convicts — cab driver Purushottam Dashrath Borate and his accomplice Pradeep Yeshwant Kokade — had raped and murdered the woman. The trial court had awarded death penalty to the duo, which was upheld by the SC.
