31 January 2014 :

the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of murder convict Mahendra Nath Das to life sentence on the grounds that the President's office took too long to reject his petition seeking mercy.
Mahendra Nath Das was convicted in two murder cases in Assam. He killed a man, Rajen Das, in Guwahati in 1990 and surrendered. In April 1996, MN Das beheaded Harakanta Das at Fancy Bazaar in Guwahati while he was out on bail and surrendered with the victim's head. Das was sentenced to death in 1997. The penalty was confirmed by the Gauhati High Court in February 1998.
Subsequently, Mahendra Das' family moved a mercy petition to the then President KR Narayanan in 1999 but the plea was finally turned down in May 2011 by the then President Pratibha Devisingh Patil. Das then filed a writ petition pleading for commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment since he had already spent about 12 years in jail during the disposal of his petition seeking presidential clemency.
Das also filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP), to commute the death sentence to life sentence which was dismissed by Gauhati High Court in January 2012. He had contended that the delay in deciding his mercy petition by the President and finally giving assent for the death sentence had resulted in excruciating agony and trauma for almost 12 years for no explainable reasons and this was a valid ground for awarding life sentence. Das had even gone a fast unto death in 2010 in protest against the delay in President's decision on his mercy plea.