Abolish Death Penalty India: 1,455 death penalties awarded in India since 2001

Sunday, March 10, 2013

1,455 death penalties awarded in India since 2001

NEW DELHI: Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) in its report "The State of Death Penalty in India 2013" stated that as per the records of the National Crimes Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, a total of 1,455 convicts or an average of 132.27 convicts per year were given death penalty during 2001 to 2011. During the same period, the highest number of death penalty was imposed in Uttar Pradesh (370) followed by Bihar (132), Maharashtra (125), Karnataka and Tamil Nadu (95 each), Madhya Pradesh (87), Jharkhand (81), West Bengal (79), Delhi (71), Gujarat (57), Rajasthan (38), Kerala (34), Odisha (33), Haryana (31), Assam (21), Jammu and Kashmir (20), Punjab (19), Chhattisgarh (18), Uttaranchal (16), Andhra Pradesh (8), Meghalaya (6), Chandigarh and Daman and Diu (4 each), Manipur and Himachal Pradesh (3 each), Tripura and Pondichery (2 each) and Goa (1). In the rest of the States (Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim) and Union Territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakswadweep), no death penalty was imposed. "This implies that on average one convict is awarded death penalty in less than every third day in India. The rarest of rare case doctrine for application of death penalty has become routine. Death penalty is no longer the exception but the rule," said Suhas Chakma, coordinator, National Campaign for Abolition of Death Penalty in India and Director of ACHR. Thousands of convicts remain on death row. This is established by the fact that during 2001 to 2011, sentences for 4,321 persons were commuted from death penalty to life imprisonment with the highest number of commutation in Delhi (2462) followed by Uttar Pradesh (458), Bihar (343), Jharkhand (300), Maharashtra (175), West Bengal (98), Assam (97), Odisha (68), Madhya Pradesh (62), Uttaranchal (46), Rajasthan (33), Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Chhattisgarh (24 each), Haryana and Kerala (23 each), Jammu and Kashmir (18). ACHR called for abolition of death penalty stating that "The execution of Nathuram Vinayak Godse for assassination of none other than the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, has not acted as a deterrent against assassination of many prominent political leaders including former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, MP Lalit Maken and many other prominent political leaders." There is no scientific or empirical basis to suggest that death penalty acts as a deterrent against any crime. Though no execution had been carried out since the execution of Dhananjoy Chatterjee on August 14, 2004, the number of murder cases have been reducing. According to the National Crimes Record Bureau, in 2001 a total of 36,202 murder cases were registered in India. Though the population of India increased from 1.028 billion in 2001 to 1.21 billion in 2011, the murder cases indeed reduced to 34,305 in 2011. Commenting on the execution of Afzal Guru, ACHR stated that India must assuage the sentiments of the Afzal Guru's family members who have effectively been not informed about the impending execution on February 9, 2013. The state itself must not be flouting or circumvents the rules as it erodes the belief in the rule of law. Guru was hanged out of the queue and was denied the right to appeal against the rejection of mercy petition. "The interventions of the Supreme Court against rejection of mercy petition of Devender Pal Singh Bhullar, the Guwahati high court against rejection of mercy petition of Mahendra Nath Das and the Madras high court against rejection of mercy petitions of Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan have established that the decision of the President of India on mercy petitions is further subject to judicial review and this opportunity to appeal has been denied to Afzal Guru," said Chakma. On the recent rejection of mercy petitions of four accused namely Gnanprakasham, Simon, Meesekar Madaiah and Bilavendran who were sentenced to death by the Supreme Court in January 2004 in connection with the killing of 21 policemen in a landmine blast at Palar in Karnataka in 1993, Chakma said: "It appears that the Government of India in its attempt to address political fallout of the botched up execution of Afzal Guru and the expressed position of the members of the UPA Government on death penalty in certain cases will carry out further executions of death row convicts not connected with political sensitivities." According to ACHR, India must follow its own civilisational values. Mythologies of India are full of stories about criminals being reformed. Valmiki, the author of the epic Ramayana, was a highway robber known as Ratnakara until he came under the influence of Maharshi Narada to leave the paths of sin. Similarly, according to Buddhist literature, Daku Angulimala (dacoit who wears finger necklace/ garland of fingers) was a ruthless killer who was redeemed by a sincere conversion to Buddhism. India as the land of Valmiki, Lord Buddha and Gandhi must follow its own civilisational values and take effective measures to join the countries which have abandoned retributive justice system and abolished death penalty. Courtesy : http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-02-15/india/37118208_1_death-penalty-achr-murder-cases

Asian Centre for Human Rights - The State of Death Penalty in India Report 2013, 14th February 2013 - http://www.achrweb.org/reports/india/IndiaDeathPenaltyReport2013.pdf

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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

Sunday, March 10, 2013

1,455 death penalties awarded in India since 2001

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