NEW DELHI: President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected the mercy petitions of six convicts, including Surinder Koli, an accused in the Nithari serial killings, currently sentenced to death in various cases.
Accepting the recommendations of the Union Home Ministry, Mukherjee also rejected the mercy pleas of Renukabai and Seema (Maharashtra), Rajendra Prahladrao Wasnik (Maharashtra), Jagdish (Madhya Pradesh) and Holiram Bordoloi (Assam).
According to the information posted on his official website, Mukherjee has already rejected the mercy pleas of 17 death row convicts since he became the President in 2012, primary among them being Mumbai attacks convict Ajmal Kasab and Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Sources said Mukherjee rejected the mercy pleas of six convicts earlier in July. Surinder Koli, who came to be known as the butcher of Nithari, was accused of killing and disposing of the bodies of children in the drain outside his house in Noida. Koli worked as a helper in the house of Moninder Singh Pandher.
In another case, sisters Renukabai and Seema along with their mother and another accomplice Kiran Shinde were accused of kidnapping 13 children between 1990 and 1996 and killing nine of them.
The third case pertains to the gruesome killing of a girl child in the village of Asra in Maharashtra in which the Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence of Wasnik.
The President also rejected the mercy petition of Jagdish who was convicted for murdering his wife and five children. Jagdish had claimed to be in an unsound state of mind, which had delayed his hanging.
In the fifth case, Mukherjee rejected the mercy plea of Holiram Bordoloi who was convicted of killing three members of a family.
In January, the Supreme Court had ruled that “inordinate and inexplicable” delays in hanging are grounds for commuting a convict’s death sentence and had spared 15 death row convicts from execution.