The Supreme Court Wednesday dismissed a petition by one of the convicts sentenced to death in the December 16, 2012, gangrape-murder case, challenging the rejection of his mercy plea by President Ram Nath Kovind. A bench of Justice R Banumathi, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice A S Bopanna turned down convict Mukesh Singh’s contentions and said, “In the result, we do not find any ground for exercise of judicial review of the order of the President of India.”. In his petition, Singh claimed all relevant materials required to enable the President to take a decision was not placed before him. The judges rejected the argument, and said to satisfy themselves, they perused files containing the communications of the Ministry of Home Affairs, National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi and the office of Lieutenant Governor and the file containing the note put up before the President of India. “From the covering letter dated 15.01.2020 from NCT of Delhi addressed to Deputy Secretary (Judicial), Ministry of Home Affairs, it is seen that. all the documents were taken into consideration and upon considering relevant records, facts and circumstances, the President rejected the mercy petition,” the judgment said, adding “there is no merit in the contention that relevant materials were kept out of consideration..”. Singh contended the President rejected his mercy plea without any application of mind on account of extraneous considerations. Turning this down, the bench said as held in previous decisions, “the court must keep in view that where the power is vested in a very high authority, it must be presumed that said authority would considerate all aspects of the matter.” It added, “We find no reason to hold that the above guidelines were not kept in view.” Singh claimed he was kept in solitary confinement for long and had suffered, including sexual abuse, in prison. The court rejected this contention, saying it “cannot be a ground for judicial review of the executive order passed under Article 72 of the Constitution rejecting the petitioner’s mercy petition”.
