The Supreme Court of Indian on Tuesday commuted death sentence of three men, convicted for killing former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, to life in jail.

The trio had pleaded for the commutation of their death sentences on grounds of inordinate delay in deciding their mercy petitions.

While commuting death sentence, a bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam, Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh cited 11-year delay on the part of the Centre in deciding their mercy plea.

The three assassins - V Sriharan alias Murugan, AG Perarivlan alias Arivu and T Suthendraraja alias Santhan had sought the commutation of their death sentence to life imprisonment on account of the inordinate delay of nearly 11 years in deciding their mercy petitions.

The SC today rejected Centre’s contention that delay in deciding mercy plea of the convicts did not result in agony.

“We implore the government to render advice in reasonable time to the President for taking a decision on mercy pleas...We are confident that the mercy plea can be decided much faster than what is being done now,” added the SC.

On February 4, 2014, the Central government had opposed the plea stating that the death convicts did not go through torture, agony and dehumanising experience during pendency of their mercy pleas.

Admitting that there has been delay in deciding the mercy petitions, the government, however, had contended that the delay was not unreasonable, unexplainable and unconscionable to commute death penalty.

The apex court had in May 2012 decided to adjudicate the petitions of Rajiv Gandhi killers against their death penalty and had directed that their plea, pending with the Madras High Court, be sent to it.

Rajiv Gandhi was killed on May 21, 1991 along with others by a suicide bomber while the former was campaigning for the upcoming elections in Sriperumbudur Tamil Nadu. – Agencies