SC seeks reply from UP government over convict’s appeal against death penalty

The Supreme Court has sought the Uttar Pradesh government’s response on a plea by a death-row convict challenging the Allahabad High Court’s judgement upholding the capital punishment awarded to him for burning alive his son and two brothers.

A vacation bench of justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Ashok Bhushan issued notice to the state on the appeal and called for the original records of the case.

The counsel representing convict Irfan requested the apex court to stay the execution of sentence. “When the appeal is pending before us, nobody is going to be executed,” the bench observed.

“Intimation of this matter be sent to the concerned jail authority,” the bench noted in its order.

Irfan challenged the April 25 verdict of the high court which had upheld the death penalty awarded to him by a trial court in Bijnor district.

Fifty-year-old Irfan was convicted by the trial court for offences under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code, including murder.

According to the police, Irfan had set the room, in which his son and two brothers were sleeping, on fire by pouring inflammable substance and bolted the door from outside on the intervening night of August 5-6, 2014.

It had said that injured persons -- Irshad, Naushad and Islamuddin -- were rushed to a hospital in Delhi where they died during the treatment.

The police said Islamuddin opposed his father’s second marriage leaving Irfan annoyed.

Irfan had assaulted his son two days prior to the incident and Irshad and Naushad had mediated between them, the police said.

Following the incident, a complaint was lodged by Irfan’s father-in-law.

During the trial, Irfan alleged that he was falsely implicated in the case by some of his relatives so as to deny a share in their ancestral property.