INDIAS first President, Rajendra Prasad, had set a healthy convention with regard to the exercise of his powers under Article 72 of the Constitution, dealing with pardon and commutation of sentences, before demitting office in May 1962 as President for the second consecutive term. Conscious of his limited powers, he asserted his moral authority over the executive, persuading it to reconsider its initial advice to reject mercy petitions in several cases. The lawyer and scholar Bikramjeet Batra says that Prasads notings on petitions suggest that he was not a vocal supporter of the death penalty and tended not to disagree when the government recommended commutation of a death penalty.
Batra further notes that President Prasad was able to put his legal expertise to sound use in cases where the government recommended rejection but he had concerns about the culpability and role of the petitioner and recommended reconsideration of such petitions.
Thus, when the file of Parmatma Saran reached President Prasad from the office of the then Home Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, it appeared to be an open-and-shut case. Minister of State for Home B.N. Datar recommended rejection of Sarans petition on January 2, 1962, and the President rejected it on January 10, 1962. The execution of Saran was scheduled to take place at the Meerut Central Jail on January 24, 1962.
Saran was an educated young employee of the Indian Railways. Infatuated with another woman, Saran took the extreme step of killing his wife in order to become eligible for a second marriage. The trial court sentenced him to death, and the High Court and the Supreme Court confirmed it. Both Shastri and Datar were convinced that the courts had correctly sentenced Saran to death in view of the barbaric offence committed by him. President Prasad too concurred with the view and rejected his mercy petition.
On January 18, 1962, Shastris office received a fresh mercy petition from Sarans father-in-law, Pt. Sheel Chand Sharma, praying for the life of Saran, especially in the interest of the only son born to Saran and his daughter. Sharma pointed out that his grandsons future, in the absence of his father, would be quite dark and his schooling and upbringing would virtually be neglected. He believed that Saran, if alive, though in jail, could be expected to make some arrangements to that extent.
The Home Minister received another representation from the 87-year-old grandmother of Saran, Ganeshi Devi. She brought to Shastris attention the fact that her son (Sarans father) had virtually become insane after he learnt the rejection of Sarans mercy petition.
These two petitions forced the government to stop Sarans execution and consider the mercy pleas afresh.
Datar noted in the file: If he [Saran] were to be executed, further and perhaps irreparable tragedies are likely to happen in this family for no fault of its members. The child is only four and a half years old. We might leave him [Saran] to pass his long life behind the prison bars and return to freedom in the fullness of time a really repentant and changed man. Datar further observed: The circumstances that weighed with me most in this respect was the highly humanitarian appeal made by the murdered womans father himself in the interest of his grandsonthe only son of the prisoner and his murdered wife. It is not unlikely that the boy would thereby remain uncared for and perhaps go astray or might meet with an early end, in as much as he is at present only four and a half years old.
President Rajendra Prasad, based on this fresh advice from the Home Ministry, commuted Sarans death sentence to life imprisonment on March 30, 1962.
Sarans case tells us two things: one, even if Sarans father-in-law and grandmother had not sent fresh mercy pleas to the government after the rejection of Sarans mercy petition by the President, nothing prevented the government from finding out, on its own, whether there were any circumstances of the criminal which could be considered mitigating, and, therefore, in favour of commutation. These circumstances might not have been made out in the convicts mercy petition; but it did not mean that they did not exist or were not sufficient grounds in favour of commuting the sentence.
Secondly, compassionate grounds in favour of the convict would not disappear simply because the crime committed by the convict was horrific or barbaric. The executive and the President must assess these compassionate grounds independently of the nature of the crime, which the Supreme Court and the courts below it have found to have been committed by a person.
V. Venkatesan
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