A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a petition filed on behalf of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who has been sentenced to death for raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl in Kolkata in 1990.
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Dismissing the petition filed by Chatterjee's brother, the SC bench said the plea did not have "any merit."
Chatterjee will be hanged in Alipore jail in Kolkata on Saturday at 0430 IST.
The court said its power to review a Presidential order rejecting a mercy plea of a convict is "very limited" and that too only if the petitioner points out that there was no application of mind to the facts of the case and/or that the decision was taken in a malafide manner.
The court said the petitioner had enumerated many facts but there was not even a whisper of evidence to show that the President had not applied his mind to all the relevant aspects of the case before dismissing the clemency plea.
Dhanonjoy was convicted and sentenced to death by an Alipore Court in West Begal on August 12, 1991.
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