Concerns are rising over the decision to grant a Presidential pardon to Mahendralal Patel, also known as Mahendra Motibhai Patel, who has not completed his sentence. Patel was convicted of Abuse of Office in 2014 and sentenced to one year in prison, yet he never served his term, having been allowed to leave for medical treatment abroad, from which he did not return.
Attempts to reach Attorney-General Graham Leung, who chairs the Mercy Commission and has been contacted since Sunday for an explanation regarding Patel’s conditional pardon, have gone unanswered. A follow-up inquiry yielded no response by the time of publication.
Jalesi Nakarawa, Commissioner of the Fiji Corrections Service (FCS), noted that Patel’s name was absent from the list submitted to the Mercy Commission. The FCS’s release list from last Thursday also did not include him. Despite this, the Fiji Government’s official Facebook page soon after announced his name among those pardoned.
Nakarawa stated that FCS processes petitions submitted by incarcerated individuals and emphasized he had no knowledge of Patel’s petition since he was not in their custody.
A statement from the Mercy Commission indicated that Patel had initially submitted a petition on April 4, 2023, which was dismissed. Following this, his lawyers sought reconsideration on June 13. The Commission took into account Patel’s age, the duration of his absence from Fiji, and his significant contributions to the country. Consequently, they recommended a conditional pardon, which was acted upon by the President on September 18, 2024, in line with constitutional provisions, confirming that their decisions adhere to the Constitution.