President Pranab Mukerjee clears all mercy petitions

President Pranab Mukerjee will not leave any burden of mercy petitions for his successor when he demits office in July this year. Clearing the backlog of mercy petitions that piled up during the tenure of his three predecessors – Pratibha Patil, APJ Abdul Kalam and KR Narayanan, President Mukerjee has taken decisions on all the pending files.

Dating back to the year 2000, President Mukerjee has cleared 32 mercy petitions of which he rejected 28. In four cases, he commuted the death penalties to life sentences.

The rejected mercy pleas include that of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, 26/11 Mumbai terror attack convict Mohammed Ajmal Kasab and Gurmeet Singh convicted in the 1986 for murdering 13 members of a family.

President Mukerjee rejected the mercy plea of 1993 landmine blast convicts in which 22 cops had died.