Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Rules schizophrenia is not mental illness, paving way for execution of murder convict
The judgement also cited a 1977 verdict from the Indian Supreme Court in the case of Amrit Bhushan
Gupta versus Union of India having somewhat similar facts and circumstances. Amrit Gupta was
sentenced to death for having committed culpable homicide which amounted to murder. His appeals in
the high court as well as in the Indian Supreme Court were dismissed and his sentence was upheld.
Likewise, his mercy petition was also rejected by the Indian president, the SC verdict recalled.
In his judgement, Chief Justice Jamali observed that all material placed on record had been perused which
revealed that indeed right from the stage of trial, Imdad Ali took such a plea in defence, but all the courts
(trial court and high court) discarded his plea of mental illness, which could be made the basis to term
him lunatic.
Even the medical record produced before us reveals that the husband (Imdad Ali) was all along
considered a psychiatric patient suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, the judgement said.
It observed that the high court had in its order aptly taken into account all relevant facts and
circumstances in the light of Prison Rules 1978 and thus rightly rejected the plea of the petitioner (Safia
Bano) and dismissed her petition.
In our opinion, rules relating to mental sickness are not subjugative to delay the execution of death
sentence, which has been awarded to the convict, Imdad Ali, and attained finality up to the level of this
court, especially when all relevant facts had received due consideration in appropriate quarters and the
mercy petition had already been dismissed by the president, the Supreme Court ruled.
This being the reason, leave is declined and this petition is dismissed, the verdict concluded.
Published in Dawn October 22nd, 2016