On Friday, the Centre addressed the Supreme Court regarding Swamy Shraddananda’s plea, which indirectly seeks a directive for the President to decide on his pending mercy petition. Shraddananda, 84, has been incarcerated for over three decades following his conviction for the murder of his wife.
The case was presented before a bench comprising Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih. During the proceedings, Additional Solicitor General K M Nataraj, representing the Centre, raised concerns about the appropriateness of the plea’s request for presidential action. “The prayer is virtually seeking a direction to the President to do it. Whether such a prayer could be considered at all? Kindly see the prayer,” Nataraj stated.
Advocate Varun Thakur, representing Shraddananda, highlighted the lengthy duration his client has been in prison and his suffering from various ailments, emphasizing the need for a resolution to his mercy petition filed in December 2023.
The bench, acknowledging the sensitivity of the case, decided to postpone the hearing for two weeks, giving the Centre time to provide further instructions on the matter.
Swamy Shraddananda, also known as Murali Manohar Mishra, has a notably contentious legal history. In July 2008, a three-judge Supreme Court bench commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment, specifying that he would not be eligible for release during his lifetime. This decision was upheld in October of the previous year when the court rejected Shraddananda’s plea to review the verdict that indefinitely barred his release.
The case against Shraddananda began with the disappearance of his wife, Shakereh, in May 1991, granddaughter of Sir Mirza Ismail, the former Dewan of Mysore. The investigation escalated in 1994 when Bengaluru’s central crime branch took over, leading to Shraddananda’s confession of the murder.
In his latest plea, Shraddananda has cited the Supreme Court’s handling of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts, who were granted parole and eventually released after 27 years, to argue for a reconsideration of his own sentence and the execution of the mercy powers by the President under Article 72 of the Constitution.
