Central Jail Jorhat

Jorhat, June 3: The inmates of Central Jail Jorhat here today appealed to the Assam Human Rights Commission to try and get the death sentence of Mahendra Nath Das commuted to life term.

Das, whose date of hanging is yet to be fixed by the state government, was shifted to Central Jail Jorhat from Guwahati on May 27 after President Pratibha Patil rejected his mercy petition last month. He is lodged in one of the seven solitary cells of the jail and no other inmate is allowed to meet or talk to him. “They cannot even see him,” a source said.

But the inmates have been keenly following the news, debates and discussions on Das’s impending hanging in print and electronic media, jail sources said.

They said the inmates did not have much legal knowledge and did not know whom to appeal to for granting mercy to Das. They had, however, heard of the rights’ body and wanted to move it in the hope that there was “still time” to change the fate of the convict residing on the same campus as theirs.

In a last ditch attempt to save Das from the gallows, some of the inmates drafted the petition in Assamese, over 300 of them signed it and sent it to the AHRC office in Guwahati through the jail authorities. Jailor Brojen Das said it was forwarded to the AHRC office today.

There are about 450 prisoners in Jorhat jail, of whom about 15 are women and over 50 per cent are convicts.

In their appeal, the prisoners urged members of the AHRC to use their office to prevail upon the authorities to commute Das’s death sentence to life term. Sources privy to the mercy plea said the prisoners contended that since the convict had already spent 14 years in prison after committing the crime, his life should be spared and commuted to a life term.

A senior AHRC official told this correspondent over phone from Guwahati that the rights’ body would not be able to intervene in the issue, as it was “outside its jurisdiction”. He said after Gauhati High Court and Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence and the President had rejected the convict’s clemency plea, the AHRC could not pass any direction.