NEW DELHI: Supreme Court judge Kurian Joseph seemed to question court procedures related to the petition of death-row convict Yakub Memon in comments that appeared to offered hope to the Mumbai serial blast case accused and those opposed to his hanging later this week.Justice Joseph, who was one of the two judges in the two-member bench hearing Memon’s last-ditch petition in the top court, observed Monday that the judges who had heard Memon’s earlier review plea had been left out of the bench that heard his curative plea last week.His comments created a stir as they appeared to challenge the notion that Memon’s case was an open-and-shut one and his hanging was imminent, with his mercy petitions already rejected by the president A curative petition is permitted in limited cases to deal with any serious miscarriage of justice. These include a person not having been heard in a case or not made a party to it or the judge having a conflict of interest but hasn’t disclosed it.Memon’s curative petition was rejected last week by a three-judge bench comprising chief justice HL Dattu and justices TS Thakur and Anil R Dave . The bench ruled that the curative petition did not meet the criteria laid down by the court and dismissed it. Justice Joseph’s observations seemed to cast doubt on the validity of that decision.Memon himself has challenged his hanging on the ground that his death warrant was issued by a court even before his curative petition—which formally marked the end of the legal process for him—was decided by the top court.He has also filed a fresh mercy plea with the Maharashtra governor since then. That plea is pending.Significantly, Justice Joseph was one the judges who had heard Memon’s earlier review plea at length in open court before dismissing it. He along with justices Anil R Dave and Jasti Chelameswar had heard the review. The top court has mandated that every death sentence requires an open-court hearing unlike in the past when it was decided by judges through circulation of information.The SC rules say that the three senior-most judges and the judges who have heard the review would deal with any curative petition, implying that the bench should have included justices Joseph and Chelameswar.Justice Joseph also seemed to question the government’s stand that the issue of mercy in Memon’s case had already been decided earlier when his brother Suleiman had petitioned the state governor and later the president for mercy for him and had been turned down.