Supreme Court: The 3-Bench comprising of Uday Umesh Lalit, S. Ravindra Bhat and P.S. Narasimha, JJ., issued notice to Madhya Pradesh government on being appraised that there is a policy of incentivising public prosecutors for obtaining capital punishments in matters prosecuted by them.
Noticeably, a petition was filed before the Court alleging that the State is granting incentives to public prosecutors on the basis of death sentence awarded in matters prosecuted by them. Assessing the gravity of allegation the Court on 29-03-2022 had issued direction to the Registry to register a Suo Motu case and change the cause title immediately.
Siddhartha Dave, Senior Advocate and K. Parameshwar, Advocate was appointed as Amicus Curiae to assist the Court in the Matter. Additionally, the Court had also heard K.K. Venugopal, Attorney General for India, Siddharth Agarwal, Advocate, representing Project-39A, Gaurav Agrawal, Advocate for NALSA and Rukhmini Bobde, Advocate representing State of Madhya Pradesh.
Accepting the Attorney General’s proposal to place on record relevant material pertaining to other jurisdictions to assist the Court in deciding the matter, the Bench has granted liberty to all the counsels engaged in the instant matter to place on record any material that would render assistance to the Court.
Considering that the matter required consideration at an early date, the Bench issued additional directions to the counsels that the needful be done within 10 days.
The State was directed to place on record the concerned Policy along with submissions in support of said Policy. The matter is listed on 10-05-2022 for further hearing.
[Irfan v. State of M. P., Writ Petition (Cri) No. 142 of 2022, order dated 22-04-2022]
Kamini Sharma, Editorial Assistant has put this report together