Submissions by the defence advocates to seek minimal punishment, and not death by hanging, will continue before special sessions judge Y D Shinde in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case. Following a guilty ruling for 12 of the 13 accused who faced trial for coordinated blasts at seven spots in first-class compartments during evening peak hours on July 11, 2006, that killed 188, the judge is hearing submissions on the quantum of punishment for each convict.
It is unlikely that the pronouncement of sentences will take place before Wednesday. The copy of the judgment has to be given to each convict soon after the pronouncement. The sessions court is shut on September 24 for Eid.
The prosecution, which normally goes first when death sentence is the maximum punishment attracted for the offence, will only start once the defence lawyers complete their submissions. The defence may finish their pleadings on Monday or Tuesday, as they have one witness whose depositions will be recorded to prove why a convict’s life must be spared. The possible punishment attracted in the case is death or life imprisonment.
Special public prosecutor Raja Thakare will begin arguments on the sentences depending on when the final submission is made by the defence lawyers. Among the lawyers for the convicts, advocate Yug Chaudhary had pleaded against the death sentence for killers of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, assassinated in May 1991. The Supreme Court had in 2014 commuted death for three of the killers, due to inordinate delay in the decision on their mercy pleas.
The prosecutor may not take more than a day to complete submissions on the punishment he will seek for each of the 12 convicts. He has to cite special reasons, where death is sought, as capital punishment is given only in the “rarest of rare” cases, as held by the SC, with aggravating circumstances outweighing any mitigating circumstance for each convict for whom the noose is sought, as a punishment that is retributive and deterrent, to society at large. The convicts and their lawyers have pleaded for reformative sentences as many have displayed ”exemplary and good conduct in jail” since their arrest, and some have no prior criminal antecedents and no one to take care of their families. The court takes the crime, its magnitude, criminality, aggravating and mitigating factors of each convict into account. The SC has held that a conspirator or a person in authority “plays a significant role” in the death sentence.
Ehtesham Sidduiqui, convicted for planting the bomb that went off at Mira Road, and for attending conspiracy meetings, had pointed to “harsh jail conditions” as mitigating circumstances, while Asif Khan, convicted for planting the bomb that exploded at Borivli station, killing 26 innocent people, said he ”forgave” the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) for implicating him, but that as a civil engineer he had suffered tremendously in solitary confinement for two years.