Bihar death row convict’s mercy petition goes missing
2 min readNew Delhi: Mercy petition of a death row convict from Bihar, Krishna Mochi, seems to have gone missing. The President’s secretariat and home ministry have denied having received it while the state government records show that it was sent to the Centre.
News reports about Krishna’s mercy petition pending since 2003 appeared in early 2014. Two days after the reports, Venkatesh Nayak of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative filed an RTI with Rashtrapati Bhavan and home ministry seeking details of his mercy petition.
In its reply, Rashtrapati Bhavan secretariat said no mercy petition had been received from Krishna. Venkatesh was also told to approach the home ministry since it is the custodian of records.
On Friday, the home ministry replied to Venkatesh that no mercy petition had been submitted by Krishna. However, home ministry also gave an ambiguous twist by stating in the reply that “some petition has just been received, which is under scrutiny”. This does not specify if the petition is about Krishna. Details were denied on the ground of privacy of the petitioner.
But Bihar government records show that Krishna’s mercy petition is pending. This was part of state government’s report to home ministry giving details of death sentences executed and pending in Bihar.
Krishna was convicted under TADA for his involvement in the Bara massacre of 1992 in which 35 upper caste men were killed by members of Maoist Communist Centre. Krishna and three others were convicted for the killing. Others are Nanhe Lal Mochi, Bir Kuer Paswan and Dharmendra Singh.
Courtesy: TNN
