Simon and Ors Vs. State of Karnataka. Decided by the Supreme Court on 29.04.2004. Criminal Appeal No. 149-150 of 2002. The President of India has rejected the mercy petitions of 4 more persons. Simon, Gnana Prakash, Madhiah and Bilavendra are the names of the persons whose mercy petitions have been rejected. They have been convicted under POTA for an offence which took more than 20 years ago. Their appeals were decided by the Supreme Court of India on 29.01.2004 and since then the accused have been on death row. In this case the trial court while convicting the accused had awarded life imprisonment, but the supreme court enhanced the sentence to death. Its one of the rare cases where the trial court had awarded life sentence and the appellate court has enhanced it to death. While awarding the sentence of life the trial court had held that the accused were apparently gang members of Verrappan and hence were involved in criminal activities because of him. The President of India should have considered the mitigating circumstances while deciding the mercy petition. The trial court had listed several reasons for not granting death sentence to the accused and these circumstances should have been considered and the death sentence should have been commuted.
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