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Hope eludes Mahendra Das

By editor |


There seems to be hardly any hope for Mahendra Das if the Supreme court refuses to listen to him. The Guahati High Court on Monday rejected his plea to commute his death sentence to lifer a few days after it completed hearing of the petition.


But his family members are likely to move the supreme court seeking justice. On April 24 in 1996, Mahendra Das beheaded Harakanta Das in Guwahati and surrendered before police with the severed head.


He was jailed in 1997 following his death sentence by a lower court in Guwahati. The Gauhati High court and Supreme Court upheld capital punishment in 1998 and 1999 respectively. Mahendra's mother moved a mercy petition to the then President KR Narayanan in 1999. But only to be dismissed in May 2011by President Pratibha Patil. Mahendra filed a writ petition pleading for commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment since he had already spent about 14 years in jail during the disposal of his petition seeking clemency.


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