Capital punishment in India

India retains capital punishment for a number of serious offences.^[1] The Indian Supreme Court has allowed the death penalty to be carried out in four instances since 1995.

The Supreme Court in Mithu vs State of Punjab struck down Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code, which provided for a mandatory death sentence for offenders serving a life sentence.^[2] The number of people executed in India since independence in 1947 is a matter of dispute; official government statistics claim that only 52 people had been executed since independence. However, research by the People's Union for Civil Liberties indicates that the actual number of executions is in fact much higher, as they located records of 1,422 executions in the decade from 1953 to 1963 alone.^[3] In December 2007, India voted against a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.^[4] In November 2012, India again upheld its stance on capital punishment by voting against the UN General Assembly draft resolution seeking to ban death penalty.^[5]

History

In colonial India, death was prescribed as one of the punishments in the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC),^[2] which listed a number of capital crimes. It remained in effect after independence in 1947.

Under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, no person can be deprived of his life except according to procedure established by law.

The Supreme Court of India ruled in 1983 that the death penalty should be imposed only in "the rarest of rare cases."^[1] While stating that honour killings fall within the "rarest of the rare" category, Supreme Court has recommended the death penalty be extended to those found guilty of committing "honour killings", which deserve to be a capital crime.^[6] The Supreme Court also recommended death sentences to be imposed on police officials who commit police brutality in the form of encounter killings.^[7]

An appeal filed in 2013 by Vikram Singh and another person facing the death sentence questioned the constitutional validity of Section 364A of the Indian Penal Code.^[8]

Other legislation

In addition to the Indian Penal Code, a series of legislation enacted by the Parliament of India have provisions for the death penalty.

Sati is an inhumane practice involving the burning or burying alive of any widow or woman along with the body of her deceased husband or any other relative or with any article, object or thing associated with the husband or such relative. Under the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 Part. II, Section 4(1), if any person commits sati, whoever abets the commission of such sati, either directly or indirectly, shall be punishable with death.^[9]

The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 was enacted to prevent the commission of offences of atrocities against the members of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Under Section 3(2)(i) of the Act, bearing false witness in a capital case against a member of a scheduled caste or tribe, resulting in that person's conviction and execution, carries the death penalty^[10] In 1989, the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act was passed which applied a mandatory death penalty for a second offence of "large scale narcotics trafficking".

In recent years, the death penalty has been imposed under new anti-terrorism legislation for people convicted of terrorist activities.^[1] On 3 February 2013, in response to public outcry over a brutal gang rape in Delhi, the Indian Government passed an ordinance which applied the death penalty in cases of rape that leads to death or leaves the victim in a "persistent vegetative state".^[11][12] The death penalty can also be handed down to repeat rape offenders under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013.

Crimes punishable by death

Clemency in the Indian Constitution

After the award of the death sentence by a sessions (trial) court,the sentence must be confirmed by a High Court to make it final.^[2] Once confirmed, the condemned convict has the option of appealing to the Supreme Court. If this is not possible, or if the Supreme Court turns down the appeal or refuses to hear the petition, the condemned person can submit a ‘mercy petition’ to the President of India and the Governor of the State.^[16]

Power of the President

The present day constitutional clemency powers of the President and Governors originate from the Government of India Act 1935 but, unlike the Governor-General, the President and Governors in independent India do not have any prerogative clemency powers.

Constitutional power

Article 72(1) of the Constitution of India states:

The President shall have the power to grant pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions of punishment or to suspend, remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence

(a) in all cases where the punishment or sentence is by a Court Martial;

(b) in all cases where the punishment or sentence is for an offence against any law relating to a matter to which the executive power of the Union extends;

(c) in all cases where the sentence is a sentence of death.

Execution of death sentence

The execution of death sentence in India is carried out by two modes, namely hanging by the neck till death and being executed by firing squad.

Hanging

The Code of Criminal Procedure (1898) called for the method of execution to be hanging. The same method was adopted in the Code of Criminal Procedure (1973).^[17] Section 354(5) of the above procedure reads as "When any person is sentenced to death, the sentence shall direct that the person be hanged by the neck till the person is dead."

Shooting

The Army Act and Air Force Act also provide for the execution of the death sentence.^[18] Section 34 of the Air Force Act, 1950 empowers the court martial to impose the death sentence for the offences mentioned in section 34(a) to (o) of The Air Force Act, 1950. Section 163 of the Act provides for the form of the sentence of death as:-

"In awarding a sentence of death, a court-martial shall, in its discretion, direct that the offender shall suffer death by being hanged by the neck until he be dead or shall suffer death by being shot to death".

This provides for the discretion of the Court Martial to either provide for the execution of the death sentence by hanging or by being shot to death. The Army Act, 1950, and the Navy Act, 1957 also provide for the similar provisions as in The Air Force Act, 1950.

History

About 26 mercy petitions are pending before the president, some of them from 1992. These include those of Khalistan Liberation Force terrorist Davinder Singh Bhullar, the cases of slain forest brigand Veerappan's four associates—Simon, Gnanprakasham, Meesekar Madaiah and Bilvendran—for killing 21 policemen in 1993; and one Praveen Kumar for killing four members of his family in Mangalore in 1994.^[19] On 27 April 1995, Auto Shankar was hanged in Salem, Tamil Nadu.

At least 100 people in 2007, 40 in 2006, 77 in 2005, 23 in 2002, and 33 in 2001 were sentenced to death (but not executed), according to Amnesty International figures. No official statistics of those sentenced to death have been released.

Afzal Guru was convicted of conspiracy in connection with the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and was sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of India upheld the sentence, ruling that the attack "shocked the conscience of the society at large." Afzal was scheduled to be executed on 20 October 2006, but the sentence was stayed. Guru was hanged on 9 February 2013 at Delhi's Tihar Jail.^[20][21]

On 3 May 2010, a Mumbai Special Court convicted Ajmal Kasab of murder, waging war on India, possessing explosives, and other charges.^[22] On 6 May 2010, the same trial court sentenced him to death on four counts and to a life sentence on five other counts. Kasab was sentenced to death for attacking Mumbai and killing 166 people on 26 November 2008 along with nine Pakistani terrorists. He was found guilty of 80 offences, including waging war against the nation, which is punishable by the death penalty.^[23] Kasab's death sentence was upheld by the Bombay High Court on 21 February 2011.^[24] and by the Supreme Court on 29 August 2012.^[25] His mercy plea was rejected by the president on 5 November and the same was communicated to him on 12 November. On 21 November 2012, Kasab was hanged in the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune.

On 5 March 2012, a sessions court in Chandigarh ordered the execution of Balwant Singh Rajoana, a terrorist from Babbar Khalsa, convicted for his involvement in the assassination of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.^[26] The sentence was to be carried out on 31 March 2012 in Patiala Central Jail,^[27] but the Centre stayed the execution on 28 March due to worldwide protests by Sikhs that the execution was unfair and amounted to a human rights violation.^[28]

On 13 March 2012, a court in Sirsa, Haryana, condemned to death the 22-year-old Nikka Singh for raping and strangling to death a 75-year-old woman on 11 February 2011.^[29] "The imposition of the death sentence was most appropriate in this case. The court has held that it was a cold-blooded murder and where rape was committed on an innocent and hapless old woman," said Neelima Shangla, the Sirsa additional district and sessions judge.^[30] "The rape and cold-blooded murder of a woman, who was of grandmother’s age of the accused, falls in the rarest of the rare case." The court held that Nikka Singh was a "savage" whose "existence on earth was a grave danger to society" as he had also attempted to rape two other village women.^[31]

A special mention here is to the 650-page written judgment in the 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi, in which the Delhi High Court panel said, "No excuse or circumstance can . . . mitigate such a treacherous and cowardly act where a defenseless woman was cruelly slaughtered by the 'guardians' of her safety."

The judgment condemned "the most inhuman mode of killing" and said, "Two persons crowding in before an elderly woman and mercilessly pumping into her not one or two but as many as 30 bullets is the ghastly scene to be conjured in the mind's eye."

Kehar Singh, was convicted and hanged on 6 January 1989, for conspiracy in the plot of the Indira Gandhi assassination, carried out by Satwant Singh and Beant Singh.^[32]

In June 2012, it became known that Indian president Pratibha Patil near the end of her five-year term as president commuted the death sentence of as many as 35 convicts to life, including four on the same day (2 June), which created a storm of protest.^[33] This caused further embarrassment to the government when it came to light that one of these convicts, Bandu Baburao Tidke—convicted for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl—had already died five years previously from HIV.^[34]

There have been calls for the introduction of the death penalty for rapists and molesters, especially since 2012 Delhi gang rape case and later crimes.

As of October 2013, there were 414 convicts on death row in India. States with the maximum number of prisoners on death row were Uttar Pradesh (106), Karnataka (63), Maharashtra (51) and Bihar (27).^[35]

NCRB Statistics

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is an Indian government agency, created in 1986, responsible for collecting and analysing crime data as defined by the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The NCRB has documented death penalties and executions in India since 1995, as part of its prison statistics. There are no collated figures available for executions before 1995.

According to the NCRB, 21 people have been executed in India since 1995. In the decade between 2001 and 2011, 1,455 convicts or an average of 132.27 convicts per year were given the death penalty. During the same period, sentences for 4,060 convicts were commuted from death penalty to life imprisonment. The NCRB does not clarify whether these figures refer to sentences passed by a trial court or those whose sentences have been upheld by a High Court or the Supreme Court, or those whose mercy petitions are pending or have been rejected.

List of people executed

References

• Lethal lottery: The Death Penalty in India -a study of Supreme Court judgments in death penalty cases 1950-2006 (summary report)
• Lethal lottery: The Death Penalty in India -a study of Supreme Court judgments in death penalty cases 1950-2006 (complete report)

External links

• Status of Death Penalty in India
• Model Prison Manual India
• Lethal lottery: The Death Penalty in India -a study of Supreme Court judgments in death penalty cases 1950-2006 from Amnesty International
• The Death Penalty in India Briefing for the EU-India Summit, 7 September 2005
• India and the death penalty Sanjoy Majumder, BBC News.
• Ajmal Kasab hanged and buried in Pune's Yerwada Jail