1993 Mumbai bomb blasts convict Yakub Memon files fresh mercy petition with President

New Delhi: 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon has filed a fresh mercy petition with President Pranab Mukherjee just a day before he is scheduled to be hanged. Yakub is scheduled to be hanged on Thursday morning.

The fresh plea has been filed by his lawyers even as a three-member bench of the Supreme Court is currently hearing his plea against his death warrant. This hearing comes after the earlier two-judge bench of Justices AR Dave and Kurian Joseph was divided in its opinion and left it to Chief Justice of India HL Dattu to set up a larger bench to decide if Yakub's execution needs a rethink.

While Justice Dave found no merit in Yakub's petition, Justice Kurian said the curative petition needs to be heard again as due process was not followed. Yakub has challenged the death warrant saying it was issued before his curative petition was heard by the SC.

The Chief Justice of India has constituted a larger bench of Justices Dipak Misra, Prafulla C Pant and Amitava Roy to decide the destiny of Memon who is the the lone death row convict in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case.

The new bench on Wednesday will have the task of deciding whether to stay the death warrant issued by TADA court in Mumbai on April 30 and go into the merits of Memon's petition.

Uncertainty for Memon aggravated on Tuesday as Justice Dave dismissed his plea without staying the death warrant while Justice Kurian differed and favoured a stay.

"There will be no order in law if one judge has stayed it (death warrant) and the other has not", the bench was told when it wanted to know the legal position arising out of the divergence of views between the two judges on the issue.

Both Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi and other senior advocates, including Raju Ramachandran, appearing for Memon, were unanimous on the legal situation that needed to be addressed by larger bench with the indulgence of the CJI.

Justice Dave was of the view that there was no infirmity in the dismissal of curative petition of Memon on July 21 and it was open for the Maharashtra Governor to take a call on his mercy plea as the condemned prisoner has exhausted all available legal remedies.