Sixteen years after they torched a bus and burnt to death three college girls while protesting the arrest of the then AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa, the convicts appealed to the Supreme Court on Friday to roll back their death penalty, saying murder committed during mob frenzy is not pre-meditated.
Arguing their review petition before a three-judge Bench led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, senior advocate L. Nageshwar Rao, who also appears for Ms. Jayalalithaa in the disproportionate assets case, said mobs go berserk and possess a demented sight of what is around them.
Referring to the riots after the killing of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Mr. Rao used the defence of “diminished responsibility” to argue that the accused, who were part of a rampaging mob, cannot be held fully criminally liable for the crime as their mental capacity was impaired at the time.
To buttress the point, one of the defence counsel, senior advocate Sushil Kumar said “in the South, people worship their leaders and on their death even kill themselves”.
“Mobs go berserk. Reason does not enter their minds. After the judgment at 10.30 a.m., the agitations had started. There was absolutely no pre-meditation. There was a workshop nearby, they took petrol from there and started sprinkling it on the buses,” Mr. Rao said recounting the events of the fateful day.
Mr. Kumar said the accused were only “looking for some government property to destroy and were not targeting human lives”. Mr. Rao argued that death was too harsh a punishment as the convicts had no personal animosity towards their victims and were themselves the victims of “mob psychology”. “Your Lordships may be knowing that communal riots are committed by mostly illiterate persons, who are indoctrinated...” Mr. Rao explained.
He said there was nothing to show that the accused cannot be “reformed”.
At one point, Justice Gogoi asked whether life would mean “life sentence without remission for 25 to 30 years”.
To this, Mr. Kumar said the Supreme Court should only say sentence reduced to “life and put a full stop” leaving the rest, including the power of remission, to the State administration. The review petition of the three death row convicts – Nedunchezhian, Ravindran and Muniappan – is being heard after a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court ordered limited, open court hearing before a three-judge Bench in case of death penalty reviews. The Dharmapuri case relates to the death of three students – Kokilavani, Gayathri and Hemalatha – of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore. The bus was was torched on February 2, 2000.
