NHRC directs Centre to submit report on missing petition

The National Human Rights Commission today directed the union home secretary to submit status report on the missing mercy petition of Assam death row convict Holiram Bordoloi within four weeks.
Director of Asian Centre for Human Rights, Suhas Chakma had filed a complaint to the NHRC alleging that the petition submitted to the President and forwarded by the office of Assam Inspector General of Prisons in a letter dated April 18, 2005, has been missing.
The petition had also been forwarded to Assam Judicial Department by the IG of Prisons in a letter dated June 6, 2005.
The office of the Assam IG of Prisons, in reply to a RTI application by Chakma had said in a letter that the mercy petition was still pending with the President but the list of such cases since 1981 received by the President's office from the union ministry of home affairs, dated March 28, 2013, does not have Bordoloi's name.

The applicant had requested that Bordoloi's petition be traced and considered in light of Supreme Court ruling of January 21.
The NHRC had subsequently issued notices to the secretary to the union ministry of home affairs and Assam home secretary calling for a report on the matter within four weeks.
Bordoloi is an accused in the killing of three persons at Nayagaon in Assam's Morigaon district on November 26, 1996 and was sentenced to death by the Sessions Court on May 5, 2003.
Gauhati High Court and Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence on March 9, 2004 and April 8, 2005.