Abolish Death Penalty India: Six convicts in death row in Bengal jails

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Six convicts in death row in Bengal jails

Saibal Sen, TNN Sep 5, 2012, 04.04PM IST KOLKATA: With Supreme Court upholding Ajmal Kasab's death sentence, six death row convicts in Bengal spending the life in the condemned cells in Alipore and Presidency Jails still await to know their fate. Among the six, three appeals are now pending in the Supreme Court; the rest in Calcutta high court. In one case, the convict's kin has informed jail authorities that the high court has commuted the death sentence to life but the order is yet to reach Alipore jail. The last death sentence in the country was executed in Alipore central jail on August 14, 2004. Dhananjoy Chaterjee, 39, was hanged for raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl in Bhowanipore on March 5, 1990. Chatterjee was a security-guard of the complex where the child stayed. Before that a serial killer Auto Shankar was hanged in Chennai central jail on April 27, 1995. Before Dhananjoy, the last execution in Bengal was also in Alipore central jail in 1993 when murder convicts, Kartik Sil and Sukumar Burman, were hanged. Since Dhananjoy's hanging courts in Bengal had passed several death sentences, the first was by a special sessions court which sentenced to death Aftab Ansari and Jamaluddin Naser to death on April 27, 2005 in the USIS attack case. Ansari is in Alipore jail since May 3, 2002; while Naser was brought here before him, on February 21 that year. The death sentence was upheld by the Calcutta high court prompting the duo to appeal against it in the Supreme Court. The other case which pending in the Supreme Court, sources said, is the death sentence awarded by the General Security Force court March 2, 2007 to former BSF head constable Balbir Singh. It is learnt the Guwahati high court has already turned down Singh's appeal against it prompting him to move the Supreme Court. Singh - admitted to Alipore jail on October 6, 2010 - was convicted for murdering his superior Deputy Commandant Kameswar Singh for ticking him off for dereliction of duty while posted at Rajnagar outpost in South Tripura district. Balbir then gunned down Assistant Commandant Alok Ranjan as he had witnessed the killing of the other officer. Among the others who've also appealed against their death sentence in Calcutta high court are Sambhu Lohar (in Alipore jail) and Kebal Roy (in Presidency jail). Sambhu was sentenced to death by a Suri court on September 15, 2010 for murdering two people inside an Sainthia oil mill. The victims were first drugged and later hacked to death with a chopper later their bodies were set on to destroy evidence. The day the Additional Sessions Judge, 3rd court, Suri sentenced Sambhu to death he was immediately brought to Alipore jail and send to the condemned cell. Roy was sentenced to death by a Kolkata court on September 24, 2008. Roy had murdered his employers - Tarachand (68) and Sarada Devi Banka (56) - in their Mansarovar Apartments home in Camac Street on April 18, 2005. Roy, police said, also stole Rs 20-lakhs worth of valuables. After the murder, Roy fled Kolkata and was arrested from his native village Simultala in Bihar a month later. Roy is in Presidency jail ever since his arrest. On August 25, this year, they've informed that a Calcutta high court division bench has commuted Bagdi's death sentence to life imprisonment. The formal court orders are yet to reach Alipore jail, though. These convicts aren't the only ones in condemned cells till a few days back. Nikku Yadav, the domestic help who was convicted of murdering his employer Rabindra Kaur Luthra in her Tripura Enclave flat in Ballygunge Circular Road on February 15, 2007, was another death row convict till the Calcutta high court on October 7, 2010 commuted his death sentence to life. Nikku had been handed death by the Alipore Sessions Court on August 29, 2008. source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-09-05/kolkata/33614556_1_alipore-jail-central-jail-death-sentence [accessed on 8th September 2012]

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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

Abolish Death Penalty India

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Six convicts in death row in Bengal jails

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