Abolish Death Penalty India: July 2009

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Confirmation case of two women in Bombay High Court

The Bombay High Court is in the midst of hearing the Confirmation case of Deepti Devasthali and Leena Devasthali the daughter and mother respectively who have been convicted by the sessions court for murdering a doctor.

The daughter and mother are presently being represented by amicus curae Ms. Rohini Salian who was appointed by the court after the Appellants had disputes with their earlier counsels.

The matter was heard by the bench of Justice Bilal Nazki and Justice Kumbhakoni initially in 2008 and remanded back to the sessions court for taking further evidence.

The case has come back to the high court after the additional evidence has been recorded and now its being heard before the bench of Justice J.N. Patel and Justice Mridula Bhatkar. The case no is confirmation case no. 1 of 2008. All the orders can be seen on the high court website on the page of the case. The order of Justice Nazki and Justice Kumbhakoni is attached in the link below.

This is the second case in recent years where 2 women are facing death penalty. Earlier the High Court and the Supreme Court have confirmed the death sentence of Gavit sisters fro Kolhapur, Maharashtra.

KCOCA includes death penalty...

The Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act has now included death penalty for some of the offences. The State legislature has passed the amendments on 31 July 2009. This is the second Bharatiya Janata Party Ruled State which has invoked death penalty for the state law. Last week the Gujarat assembly had included death penalty for the offences relating to illicit liquor in the state.

While the efficacy of death penalty as a punishment is being questioned worldwide the BJP governments continue to expand the scope to petty crimes also.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Gujarat assembly passes bill proposing death penalty for bootleggers

The Gujarat assembly on Tuesday unanimously passed the Bombay Prohibition (Gujarat Amendment Act) 2009 bill that proposes death sentence or life imprisonment for those found guilty of manufacturing and selling illicit liquor in case of death of those who consume the brew in the state.

The new bill follows the death of 136 people after consuming illicit brew in Ahmedabad since July 5.

The Gujarat government proposed an amendment to the Bombay Prohibition Act 1949 proposing harsher punishment for those who manufacture and sell illicit liquor resulting in the death of consumers.

The new bill was tabled in the assembly by Minister of State for Home Amit Shah and, after an hour-long discussion, the members unanimously passed the amended bill, which is now called 'Bombay Prohibition (Gujarat Amendment Act) 2009'.

The amended bill has also proposed seven-10 years' imprisonment for those found guilty of manufacturing, selling or distributing country liquor -- in cases where it does not result in the death of any consumer.

Shah told the house that the prohibition policy was proposed by Mahatma Gandhi to the British rulers in 1915. The Congress party during the British rule had promised Mahatma Gandhi that the party would implement prohibition in Gujarat after independence. It was enacted in Gujarat from 1950.

The Bombay Prohibition Act 1949 had undergone amendments in 1964, 1978, 2003 and 2005. The Bombay Prohibition (Gujarat Amendment Act) 2009 also makes it mandatory for the police to send the seized consignment of country liquor to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Gujarat for testing before suitable charges are filed against the culprits. The seized vehicle in which the liquor was carried would be auctioned and the proceeds deposited in the state government treasury, the amended bill states.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

"I'm not bothered if I hang" says Mumbai gunman

The lone surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks said today that he was ready to go to the gallows and wanted no mercy from the court for his role in one of India's worst terrorist acts, which left 166 people dead.

"Whatever I have done, I have done in this world. It would be better to be punished in this world. It would be better than God's punishment. That's why I have pleaded guilty," Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani, told the court.

Kasab unexpectedly confessed on Monday to taking part in the three-day attack last November, leaving a trail of carnage across downtown Mumbai, India's financial and entertainment capital.

"If I am hanged for this, I am not bothered. I don't want any mercy from the court. I understand the implications of my accepting the crime," he said.

Read the full story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/22/mumbai-terror-attacks-kasab-execution

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

President likely to discuss pending mercy petitions with PM

The Indian Express has reported that President Pratibha Patil is likely to discuss the pending mercy petitions before her very soon with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. There are 26 mercy petitions pending before the president of India.

“The President would like to be apprised of the government’s stand on death penalty, especially in view of the large number of representations received from individuals and organisations such as the Amnesty International and the UN Commission on Human Rights for abolishing death penalty in the country. Before she takes a view on the issue, she intends to hold discussions with the Prime Minister,” a source in the Rashtrapati Bhavan told The Indian Express.

Death Penalty for selling liquour

The Gujarat Government in reaction to the hooch tragedy in July 2009 is planning to bring bill in the assembly at the earliest wherein the stockist, sellers, manufacturers and the transporters of illicit liquor may be given death sentence.

Source : Hindustan Times 16 July 2009

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

6,767 criminals convicted after speedy trial in the first half of 2009

As many as 6,767 criminals have so far been convicted in Bihar this year till June following speedy trial conducted for ensuring quick disposal ofcrime cases. Out of these, 8 criminals were awarded capital punishment and901 were awarded life imprisonment, a police headquarters press note onTuesday said. Patna with 658 convictions, has again topped the list followed by Nalanda(576) and Muzaffarpur 453). These figures are based on the convictionstill June this year. In 2008, too, Patna had topped the list and a total of 1,301 criminalswere convicted here after speedy trial. The state government, in its moveto bring criminals to terms, launched a special drive for speedy trial incriminal cases in 2006 which so far has delivered very good results. In the launching year, a total of 6,839 criminals were convicted and thefigure went up to 9,853 in 2007. The tempo was maintained in 2008 during which a total of 12,007 criminals were convicted in Bihar. Having crossed the 6,700mark in the first 6 months of the current year,the state is likely to improve its performance compared to the previousyear. What should work as a deterrent for the criminals is the fact thatout of a total conviction of 35,466 criminals between January 2006 andJune 2009, a whopping 6,765 have been awarded life imprisonment and 91 ofthem capital punishment.

(Source: The Times of India, 8 July)

Sarabjit’s mercy plea to Zardari on Wed

LAHORE: Indian death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh’s lawyer will file a fresh mercy petition before Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday in the wake of the Pakistan Supreme Court dismissing his appeal against the capital punishment.
Owais Sheikh, the new counsel for Sarabjit, said the petition seeking clemency for the Indian national will include a letter addressed to Zardari by the condemned man.

“I will file the mercy petition on Wednesday. I have also sought a meeting with the President so I can take up the matter with him personally,” Sheikh said on Monday.

Sheikh said the petition will include a letter from Sarabjit in which he has asked the President to pardon him on humanitarian grounds. PTI

Sarabjit has already spent 19 yrs in prison.

(Source: Mumbai Mirror 7th July 2009)

Supreme Court: Execution by hanging to continue

Hanging by the neck till death would continue to be the mode of execution of condemned prisoners, SC said on Monday refusing to entertain a PIL seeking replacement of the cruel and painful method with the lethal injection, a method practised in the US.

"How do you know that hanging causes pain? And how do you know that injecting the condemned prisoner with a lethal drug would not cause pain?" asked a bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice P Sathasivam.

PIL petitioner Ashok Kumar Walia probably thought that the bench was mistaking his plea and tried to impress upon the court by arguing that he was not seeking abolition of death penalty but only a change in the manner of execution of prisoners on the death row.

But, it appeared that the bench understood the implications of the plea and said it has been opined that hanging, which involved dropping the prisoner with the noose around the neck several feet down so as to dislocate his neck and sever the spinal cord, also caused instant death.

The CJI said: "Many countries, still practising death penalty, have various methods of execution death squad which guns down a condemned prisoner from close range, hanging by the neck, electric chair and by injecting a lethal drug."

"In India, we have a very, very liberal sentencing system based on a humane law. The courts in rarest of the rare cases award death sentence," the bench said. Before dismissing the PIL, the court told the petitioner to create public opinion for the abolition of capital punishment.

India last carried out the death sentence in 2004 when Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged to death for rape and murder of 14-year-old school student Hetal Parekh in 1990.

(Source: The Times of India, 7 July)

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The Death Penalty Scenario in India

India is one of the 193 countries that retains death penalty. There has always been a few imminent judges who have pronounced compelling verdicts upholding the rights of prisoners on death row. There has been increasing debate in various platforms advocating abolition of death penalty or at least to rethink sentencing policies in India. The Indian government has however always been committed to the retention of the death penalty, irrespective of their political ideology. India has voted against a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) draft resolution on the use of death penalty, saying it goes against the statutory law of the country where an execution is carried out in the "rarest of rare" cases. India retains the death penalty as punishment for a number of crimes including murder, kidnapping, terrorism, desertion, inducement to suicide of a minor or a mentally-retarded person and has more recently in 2013 come to include the offence of rape in certain circumstances. Most recently, there is an outrage over child rape and murder.

After observing an unofficial moratorium of 8 years in India, the Indian Government in November 2012 carried out the execution of Ajmal Kasab, convicted in the Mumbai attacks case, without public knowledge. This was followed by the secret execution of Afzal Guru, convicted in the Parliament attack case of 2001, in February 2013, under similar circumstances, without intimating his immediate family or affording a chance of judicial review. In both cases, the executions were carried out under covert operations conducted by the Government immediately upon rejection of their mercy petitions. Before these executions, the last execution to be carried out in India was that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee in 2004 who was convicted of rape and murder and which sentence was carried out after he had spent 13 years in solitary confinement. Following this, several mercy petitions of death row convicts have come to be rejected. The fear of execution of such convicts is imminent. Bolstered by the Government's unapologetic conduct and public outcry, especially in recent cases of rape and murder reported in the country, the courts are continuing to hand down death sentences at an alarming rate.

In the recent past, there have been a few empirical studies (mainly four) conducted with prisoners on death row. This has highlighted the situation of prisoners on death row.

(1) Most recently the India Exclusion Report 2017-18 found that fair trial rights and guarantees are reduced to a nullity and seeks to breach the citadel of the collective silence. It further said that Convicts on death row in India belong to groups marginalised along the axes of caste, religion, economic vulnerability and educational deprivation, and their fair trial rights, though a part of the Right to Life guaranteed by the Constitution, are invariably non-existent, a survey of 371 out of the 385 persons living under the death sentence and their families has revealed.

(2) Another study was The Death Penalty Research Project (2015) which was conceived with an aim to document the socio-economic profile of prisoners sentenced to death in India and map their experience within the criminal justice system.

There were two other academic studies that were done conducted by Dr. Reena Mary George –

(3)“Voices of prisoners surviving the death row in India” (2014) done through the University of Vienna under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Christoph Reinprecht (Sociology) and Prof. Dr. Manfred Nowak (Law and Ex-United Nations Rapporteur on Torture). George’s research highlights three salient features, namely: poverty, social exclusion and marginalisation are antecedent to death penalty; death penalty is a constructed account by the state machinery; and prisoners on death row situate dignity higher in the juxtaposition of death and dignity.

(4) Another one “Death Penalty – A Human Rights Perspective” (2009) done through the University of Mumbai under the guidance of Retired Justice Hosbet Suresh. This was a study in Maharashtra with the objectives to firstly study the impact of death penalty on the social, mental, and physical being of the inmate and secondly, to study the perception of opinion leaders on death penalty with reference to human rights. All the above reports are public documents.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Prison Statistics 2015, there are 101 prisoners sentenced to death. The actual figure of sentences originally awarded is much higher considering the death sentences of 49 convicts came to be commuted to life imprisonment in the said period. As of today, almost in 2019, the figures are unknown through government statistics, however, research centres claim this figure to be around 371 convicts. During the 1980s the Supreme Court sought to restrict the use of the death penalty by characterizing it as a punishment reserved only for the “rarest of the rare” cases. The doctrine has not had the desired effect. According to a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, Rajindar Sachar: “after the rarest of rare doctrine was introduced in 1980, the Supreme Court confirmed death penalty in 40 per cent of cases in the period 1980-90 while it was 37.7 per cent between 1970 and 1980. For the high courts it rose from 59 per cent in 1970-80 to 65 per cent during 1980-90”. Over the past two decades the death penalty has been extended to include more crimes and been handed down with increasing frequency.

Most recently while commuting a sentence in Supreme Court (2018), Justice Joseph did not seek the reconsideration of the Bachan Singh judgment, but only sought to re-examine the purpose and practice of the death penalty, and whether as a punishment, it serves any goal at all. In other words, the death penalty can continue to remain constitutionally valid because of the Bachan Singh judgment, but its application in substantive cases coming before the court must be restricted to only those cases which meet the criteria laid down in that case.

While updating the blog and conducting my own empirical studies, I observed the heinous nature of the crimes that were committed and thought about the families, about their loss, about the victims who for no fault of their own died. If I lost my relative or a dear friend, would I still oppose death penalty and would I still advocate to abolish the death sentence? Having worked in the criminal justice system and also having the seen the other side, where often it is the marginalized, vulnerable and oppressed who are on death row makes me want to advocate for abolition of this punishment. Victims should definitely get justice for their loss, for their pain. No one should escape the rule of law. As long as humanity exists; crime will exist. Should we not re-consider our sentencing policies?

Reena Mary George