Abolish Death Penalty India: He’s waiting for the hangman since 1996

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

He’s waiting for the hangman since 1996

Held In ’91, Convict’s Plea Gathers Dust With Prez

Chandigarh: Piara Singh (80) can neither walk nor see. His dementia, too, is getting worse by the day. And the world has forgotten about him.

In what must rank as one of India’s most callous instances of treating prisoners, Piara, a murder convict with capital punishment hanging over his head, has been languishing in Amritsar jail since 1991, mostly in solitary confinement, with neither death nor mercy rescuing him. Although his mercy petition is pending with the President since 1997, nothing by way of either relief or upholding of the sentence has come from Rashtrapati Bhavan.

To his lawyer Navkiran Singh, who meets the condemned man once in a while, Piara whispers that he can’t take it anymore. ‘‘I should have been hanged the day they said I should be killed,’’ he mumbles. It was nearly two decades ago that Piara Singh, then about 60, stepped inside Amritsar jail after being arrested in a murder case, a crime his three sons were also subsequently charged with. The death sentence was handed to him five years later in 1996, triggering his removal to solitary confinement in a 12X6 cell. He has been there since.

Residents of Amritsar’s Baserke village, Piara and his sons were found guilty of firing at a gathering to celebrate a marriage in November, 1991. It was an old enmity and by the time the violence ebbed, 17 people died. ‘‘I was moved by his plight when I accidentally stumbled upon him at Amritsar jail where I went to collect data on death row inmates in 2006,’’ said Navkiran Singh. ‘‘I decided I would fight for him. But now Piara just prays for death. It is horrifying.’’

While his initial mercy petition is gathering dust in Delhi, closer home, a PIL was filed in the Punjab and Haryana HC in August 2006, pleading that it is inhuman to keep convicts in solitary confinement. It also pleaded that Piara’s death sentence be commuted to a life term.

Gearing up for August 19, the PIL’s next date of hearing, Navkiran said, ‘‘Life term, in the eyes of the law, is interpreted to be of 20 years and in a normal murder case, after adding remission, it comes down to nine. Piara has suffered a lot. At least he should spend the last days of his life in his house.’’

But with neither the hangman nor the courts reavhing out, disease is slowly consuming the frail man. A medical report in January says, ‘‘Piara has osteoarthritis in both knee joints and acid peptic disease. As a result of prolonged incarceration, he has symptoms of mild psychotic disorder which at times results in him hallucinating.’’

No End In Sight?

November 1991: Piara arrested for murder, sent to Amritsar jail
January 1996: Gets death sentence along with son Sarabjit
Feb 2001: Piara’s other sons, Gurdev and Satnam, too get death verdict
March 1997: Files mercy petition with President of India
August 2006: PIL in Punjab & Haryana HC requesting conversion of death sentence to life imprisonment
1950-1980: Between 3,000 to 4,000 executions took place in the country
1980-1997: Two to three convicts were hanged per year
1997-2004: De facto moratorium on executions
August 2004: One execution for rape and murder
After 2004: No execution, but capital punishment is being handed down

(Source: Times of India 12 August 2009
Supriya Bhardwaj | TNN)

3 comments:

SILVER INNINGSJune 24, 2010 at 8:08 PM
Its sad , this is case of Elder Abuse , pls let us know the status of this case.

This is violation of Human Right by government, how can you hang 81 yrs old elderly suffering from Dementia.

Sailesh Mishra,Silver Inning Foundation
ReplyDelete
Replies
Abolish Death Penalty IndiaNovember 25, 2011 at 3:01 AM
The death sentence has been converted to life imprisonment. Do not know though when he is going to be released.
ReplyDelete
Replies
SILVER INNINGSJune 23, 2012 at 10:31 PM
He has been pardon ? in June 2012
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

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