People in the Erode dist send mercy petitions for Govindasamy

According to the PUCL activists who gathered the story from Kondayapalayam villagers, Nagamalai Gounder, Govindasamy’s paternal uncle, and Kaliamma (who had been widowed early), were involved in a property dispute. Gounder had allegedly been trying to misappropriate her family property. When the long feud between them reached flash-point in 1984, Govindasamy murdered his uncle’s family.

Four years after the murder, the trial court acquitted Govindasamy in 1988, following which he married Eashwari and became a father of two. However, in 1998, the Madras High Court reversed the trial court sentence and sentenced him to death. The Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence, thus closing all avenues of mercy.

The death sentence was initially scheduled for execution on March 16, but was stayed for 15 days on March 15. Govindasamy was given a fresh, but short-lived, lease of life.

Sudha Ramalingam says, “Death sentence is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases where the criminal involved is beyond redemption.”

In his letter to President K R Narayanan seeking mercy for Govindasamy, former Supreme Court judge and chairman of the Campaign Committee Against Death Penalty V R Krishna Iyer points out that the Constitution is a compassionate instrument and pleads on “bended knees” to pardon Govindasamy. The letter states that eminent citizens such as Justice P M Bhagwati, social activist Baba Amte, former chairperson of the National Commission for Women Mohini Giri, social activist Asghar Ali Engineer, Rajya Sabha member Kuldip Nayar and short film director Anand Patwardhan have already appealed to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to commute Govindasamy’s death sentence.

As for Govindasamy, whose plea for mercy has already been rejected by the President, all that is left is a sense of well-being that his whole village stands behind him and a faint hope that the sentence will be reversed.