AIDWA asks President not to grant clemency

All-India Democratic Women's Association on Tuesday appealed to the President not to grant clemency to Dhananjoy Chatterjee facing death sentence for murder and rape.

All-India Democratic Women's Association on Tuesday appealed to the President not to grant clemency to Dhananjoy Chatterjee facing death sentence for the murder and rape of a minor school girl in Kolkata 10 years ago.

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"AIDWA holds that this case can be counted as rarest of the rare case as enunciated in the earlier Supreme Court judgement on Capital Punishment", General Secretary Brinda Karat said in a release.

She said that the frequency of child rape and subsequent murder of the victim, instead of heightening social outrage, seemed to have, on the contrary, deadened public consciousness.

"This is reflected in argument that since child rape and murder is not rare, death sentence is not called for", she added.

AIDWA, she said, was against the liberal use of Capital Punishment. However, in the case under discussion, death sentence is according to the law of the land.