By Rana Ajit
New Delhi, Oct 13 (IANS) Can judges of the Supreme Court or the court itself violate human rights? This was the poser of the bench of erstwhile Justice Arijit Pasayat in May this year while restoring a murder convict’s death sentence - but without giving him hearing.

Now the apex court has initiated steps to rectify the grave error involving violation of the principles of natural justice.

A bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly has suspended Justice Pasayat’s order and decided to hear the convict on the issue.

“On May 8 this year, a two-judge bench of this court overlooked the fact that the petitioner (murder convict), who was the main person to be adversely affected, was not present, and took a decision quashing the commutation of death sentence to life,” pointed out the bench.

“In our considered view, on the ground of involving violation of the principles of natural justice alone, this review petition (of the convict) qualifies for hearing,” said the bench early this month.

The bench gave the order while issuing notices to various parties, including the Assam governor and the National Human Rights Commission, which had directed the governor to commute the death sentence despite it having been confirmed by the apex court earlier.

Ramdeo Chauhan had been sentenced to death for hacking to death four members of a family in Assam in late 1980s. The sentence had been confirmed by the apex court.

Enraged at the NHRC’s direction to the Assam governor to commute Chauhan’s death sentence, confirmed by the apex court earlier, Justice Pasayat scrapped the NHRC order.

Furious that the NHRC had treated an apex court order as violation of human rights, Justice Pasayat snubbed the rights panel, saying that the Supreme Court verdict upholding the death penalty cannot amount to violation of the convict’s human rights.

Justice Pasayat’s bench junked the NHRC direction to the governor, while wondering “whether the judges of the Supreme Court or the court itself can violate human rights”.

The NHRC had on its own taken up the issue of examining the legality of the death sentence as it was not clear whether at the time of committing the murders Chauhan was a juvenile, and hence not liable to be accorded death penalty for the crime.

While restoring death sentence to Chauhan, who is now in his late 30s, Justice Pasayat ticked off the NHRC for “behaving like a super court and sitting on judgement over an apex court verdict”.

However, the apex court has now realized that in its anger against the NHRC, it had ended up violating the principles of natural justice by restoring Chauhan’s death sentence without giving him a hearing.