In the latest development, President Droupadi Murmu rejected the mercy plea of the Pakistani terrorist Mohammed Arif aka Ashfaq who was convicted of attacking Delhi’s Red Fort 24 years ago. It is to be noted that Arif’s mercy petition was submitted on May 15 that was rejected on May 27 according to the report from the President’s secretariat.
The Supreme Court in 2022 emphasized that the Red Fort attack hinted at a significant threat to India and left no mitigating factors in Arif’s favor.
The attack occurred on December 22, 2000, and resulted in the death of three army personnel from the seven Rajputana Rifles at the fort. Mohammed Arif, a member of the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and a Pakistani national, was apprehended four days after the attack. He was initially convicted of conspiring to attack the army personnel in October 2005 and was subsequently sentenced to death.
Arif, along with three other LeT terrorists, infiltrated India in 1999 and devised the Red Fort attack in a house in Srinagar. The other terrorists involved—Abu Shaad, Abu Bilal, and Abu Haider—were killed in separate encounters.
The Delhi High Court upheld Arif’s death sentence in September 2007, and the Supreme Court affirmed it in 2011. After his review petition was dismissed in August 2012, Arif filed a curative petition in January 2014.
A constitution bench of the Supreme Court ruled in September 2014 that all cases where the death sentence was awarded by the high court must be reviewed by a bench of three judges. Prior to this ruling, review and curative petitions of death row convicts were not heard in open court but were decided in chamber proceedings by circulation.
In January 2016, a constitution bench directed that Arif could request a re-opening of the dismissal of his review petitions for an open court hearing within one month.
