The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the plea of Md Arif, the lone death row convict in the 2000 Red Fort attack case, for a fresh hearing of his dismissed review petition in the open court.
With this, Arif, a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist, has got another opportunity to assail the award of capital punishment.
A five-judge Constitution Bench, headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur, modified its September 2, 2014, verdict by which the benefit of open court hearing in a review petition was available to those convicts whose petitions were pending and also whose executions were not given effect.
The Apex Court, by a majority verdict, had then said that an outer limit of 30 minutes be provided for oral hearing in such cases and made it clear that a condemned convict, whose review plea has been dismissed and sentence is still to be executed, can approach the Apex Court to re-open his case.
“It will also apply where a review petition is already dismissed but the death sentence is not executed so far. In such cases, the petitioners can apply for the reopening of their review petition within one month from the date of this judgement. However, in those cases where even a curative petition is dismissed, it would not be proper to reopen such matters,” it had said.
Md Arif alias Ashfaq, a Pakistani national who has already exhausted his review and curative remedies, has sought another chance to argue his review plea in an open court, saying that those pleas were dismissed before the historic verdict.
His counsel said that Md Arif’s was the case falling in a solitary category and he will be the only person who will be deprived of the benefit of the judgement that the review plea of a death row convicts should be heard in open court by a bench having corum of three judges.
Allowing his plea, the Bench said, “The petitioner is entitled for re-opening of the review petition which is already dismissed.”