New Delhi: President Droupadi Murmu rejected a mercy plea filed by Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Mohammed Arif, who was sentenced to death for his role in conspiring to carry out the 2000 Red Fort terrorist attack, PTI reported.
Its report added that Murmu received his mercy plea on May 15 and rejected it on May 27.
Two militants entered the Red Fort on December 22, 2000 and opened fire, killing three security personnel. The authorities said the militants then escaped from the premises.
A trial court convicted Arif, who is from Pakistan, and sentenced him to death in 2005. The Delhi high court and the Supreme Court have upheld his sentence.
The attack strained relations between India and Pakistan.
In 2016, the Supreme Court allowed Arif to file a petition reviewing his sentence on technical grounds, but a three-judge bench led by then-Chief Justice U.U. Lalit dismissed his petition in 2022.
The bench said there were no mitigating factors in Arif’s case, adding that the fact that there was an attack on India’s “unity, integrity and sovereignty” outweighed any factors that could “even remotely be brought into consideration as mitigating circumstances on record”.
PTI reported that Murmu’s rejection of Arif’s mercy plea is the second time she has turned down such a plea during her presidency.
However, it also cited experts as saying that death row convicts can still approach the Supreme Court asking for their sentence be commuted on the grounds of prolonged delay under Article 32 of the constitution.
