Surinder Koli’s death sentence commuted to life

ALLAHABAD, January 28, 2015(Agency) The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence of Surender Koli to life in a Nithari serial killings case.The hearing on a petition challenging the death sentence awarded to Koli, the prime accused in the Nithari serial killings case, concluded on Tuesday before the Court.A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice P.K.S. Baghel, which had also stayed the execution of the capital punishment, gave its judgement on a Public Interest Litigation filed by People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Wednesday.A petition filed later by Koli himself, challenging the death sentence on the same ground as the one stated in the PIL, had also been clubbed with it.The death sentence was awarded to him by a special CBI court at Ghaziabad on February 13, 2009.

The PIL was filed on October 31, 2014, three days after the Supreme Court rejected Koli’s recall application.The death warrant issued by the trial court on September 2, 2014 had fixed September 12, 2014 as the date of hanging, though its execution was stayed in view of the apex court’s decision to hear the recall application.Rejection of the recall application had cleared the docks for execution of the death sentence, though the same was stayed by the High Court on October 31, 2014 when it decided to hear the PIL wherein it was pleaded that the



period elapsed in disposal of Koli’s mercy petition was “3 years and 3 months” and, as such, its execution would be in violation of the Right to Life granted in Article 21 of the Constitution.After his appeal against the trial court order was turned down vide a High Court order dated September 11, 2009, whereby co-accused and his employer Moninder Singh Pandher was acquitted, Koli filed a petition before the Supreme Court challenging his conviction which was dismissed on February 15, 2011.Koli, thereafter filed his mercy petition before the Governor of Uttar Pradesh on May 7, 2011, which was rejected 23 months later, on April 2, 2013.The mercy petition was thereafter forwarded to the Union Home Ministry on July 19, 2013 and it was turned down by the President on July 20, 2014.The court had agreed to hear the PIL disagreeing with the Centre’s preliminary objection that “the convict (Koli) had not filed a petition (at the time of filing of the PIL) challenging the rejection of his mercy petition”.“The proceeding which has been instituted before this court is not in the nature of an appeal on merits against the order of conviction.“The petition seeks to question the constitutionality of the execution of the sentence of death in the present case, on the ground of a delay on the part of constitutional authorities in disposing of the mercy petitions,” the court had said.