Afzal Guru/Ajmal Kasab ::2/5:: Awaiting Death Row A 'Cruel Punishment'!!! :- Supreme Court

Death row convicts are human beings and should not be used as pawns in furthering some larger political or Government policy. The Government must consider their pleas for mercy expeditiously. The Supreme Court said this while dismissing a death row convicts plea that his punishment be scrapped on the ground that he had not been hanged three years after he was given death. But it observed that making a death row convict wait was cruel. "The cruelty of capital punishment lies not only in the execution itself and the pain incident thereto, but also in the dehumanising effects of the lengthy imprisonment prior to execution," it said. The court on Friday reminded the Government that the mercy petitions of 26 condemned prisoners, including Parliament attack convict Mohammed Afzal Guru, were pending before the President. "We must say with the greatest emphasis that human beings are not chattels and should not be used as pawns in furthering some larger political or government policy," the court observed. Is capital punishment cruel? Is it time to end capital punishment? CNN-IBNs Sagarika Ghose asked Congress Rajya Sabha MP and Spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi, social activist Harsh Mander and senior lawyer and BJP leader Mahesh Jethmalani. Jethmalani believed death penalty was a political tool. Governments, through mercy petitions, use it according to their whim and fancy. It was a Congress Government that very expeditiously decided Kehar Singhs mercy petition in the assassination case of Indira Gandhi and he was hung. Afzal Guru was pronounced guilty by the Supreme Court in 2005—it is a travesty of justice that the hanging sword of Damocles should be kept over the head of the accused for so long, said Jethmalani................. http://ibnlive.in.com/news/ftn-waiting-on-death-row-a-cruel-punishment/101911-3.html