In Brief
Jagdish was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering his wife and five children. He filed a mercy petition in October 2009, but the State of Madhya Pradesh took over 4 years to forward it without explanation, resulting in total delay of nearly 5 years before rejection in July 2014. The Supreme Court held that unexplained, inordinate delay by the State in forwarding mercy petitions, combined with Jagdish's 14 years of incarceration, violated his right to procedural due process under Article 21. The Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment without possibility of release, finding the arbitrary delay itself constituted a form of additional punishment incompatible with constitutional guarantees.
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