BENGALURU: Serial rapist and now a death row convict, B A Umesh Reddy, filed a petition before the High Court seeking commutation of hie death sentence.When the matter came up for hearing on Monday, the division bench of Chief Justice Subhro Kamal Mukherjee and Justice R B Budihal indicated it would be taken up on Tuesday.
Reddy has cited ‘avoidable and excessive delay’ of over two years in the disposal of his mercy petition and consequent mental illness.Citing that the Supreme Court had recognised such factors in the Shatrughan Chauhan vs Union of India case, the petition said these are independently sufficient to render the death sentence inexecutable.
Reddy challenged the rejection of his mercy petition by the Governor and the President.
Case records show that he was kept in solitary confinement from the date of the trial court judgment. During solitary confinement, he developed serious mental illness, the petition said. “Each of these facts are relevant for deciding the mercy petition, and yet none of these facts were communicated to the President or to the Governor. This has vitiated their decision to reject the mercy petition,” Reddy’s counsel said.
The counsel stated that the Supreme Court and high courts had commuted death sentence to life imprisonment in numerous identical cases.The SC had confirmed Reddy’s death sentence for rape and murder of Jayashri Maradi Subbayya in 1998.
Jail SP meets judge
The Hindalga prison Superintendent of Police met a city civil court judge here on Monday to ask him to decide the date for hanging Umesh Reddy. Sources said SP T P Shesha met the judge with a copy of the SC order and requested him to fix a date to hang Reddy. However, the date for the hanging will be decided only after the registrar of the court gets correspondence from the SC.