Abolish Death Penalty India: Nine prisoners at risk of execution in India: Amnesty International

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Nine prisoners at risk of execution in India: Amnesty International

Statement published on 21 February 2013 by Amensty International on http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA20/008/2013/en/900ca575-e03d-4e9c-b29b-0bdd3ede6744/asa200082013en.html

NINE PRISONERS AT RISK OF EXECUTION

Following two recent secret executions in India, there is fear that the Indian authorities may execute nine other prisoners whose petitions for mercy have not yet been ruled on. The mercy petitions of eight men and one woman are pending with either the Union Home Ministry or the President: Gurmeet Singh, Dharampal, Suresh, Ramji, Praveen Kumar, Jafar Ali, Sonia (f), Sanjeev, and Sundar Singh. Ministers have publicly stated that decisions on some of these petitions will be made soon, putting the nine in imminent danger of execution. The manner in which the Indian authorities have dealt with executions recently raises serious concerns and increases the risk of executions. Mercy petitions are generally considered in the order in which they are filed. However, the authorities have started to consider cases out of turn, making it difficult to determine which case is being considered when. The two recent executions were announced to the public after being carried out; this is in violation of international standards on the use of the death penalty and makes timely interventions before executions impossible. This means we can no longer know which mercy petitions are being considered, when decisions are be made, and whether these decisions would be public. The Indian government executed Pakistani national Ajmal Kasab on 21 November 2012, for involvement in the 2008 Mumbai multiple attacks. This was the first execution in India in eight years. On 9 February, they executed Afzal Guru, convicted for the attack on India’s parliament in December 2001. These two executions were considered out of turn and were not announced to the public until they had been carried out. The relevant government minister publicly stated that no prior announcement was made in Ajmal Kasab’s case in order to avoid intervention from human rights activists. In Afzal Guru’s case, the family only received notification of the execution after it had been carried out, and the body was not returned to them for burial.

Please write immediately in English or your own language:

- Urging Indian authorities to stop plans to execute Gurmeet Singh, Dharampal, Suresh, Ramji, Praveen Kumar, Jafar Ali, Sonia, Sanjeev, and Sundar Singh, and all other executions;

- Urging Indian authorities to commute all death sentences to terms of imprisonment;

- Reminding Indian Authorities that the UN General Assembly has called repeatedly for a moratorium on executions, with a view to abolishing the death penalty, and pointing out that India's decision to resume executions has set it against the global trend towards abolition.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 4 APRIL 2013 TO:

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President

President Pranab Mukherjee

Rashtrapati Bhavan

New Delhi 110 004, India

Fax: +91 11 23017290;

+91 11 23017824

Email: (via website)

http://www.helpline.rb.nic.in/

Salutation: Dear President Mukherjee

Prime Minister

Dr. Manmohan Singh

South Block, Raisina Hill

New Delhi 110 001, India

Email: (via website)

http://pmindia.gov.in/feedback.php

Salutation: Dear Prime Minister

And copies to:

Minister of Home Affairs

Sushilkumar Shinde

104, North Block,

Central Secretariat

New Delhi 110001, India

Fax: + 91 11 23094221

Email: hm@nic.in

Salutation: Dear Minister�

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country.

Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date. This is the second update of UA 337/12. Further information: http://amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA20/004/2013/en

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URGENT ACTION

nine prisoners at risk of execution

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Since taking office in July 2012, India’s President Pranab Mukherjee, has rejected the mercy petitions of seven people on death row and commuted the death sentence of one prisoner, after which the two secret executions took place. The five remaining prisoners whose mercy petitions have now been rejected are: Saibanna Ningappa Natikar, Gnanprakasham, Simon, Meesekar Madaiah, and Bilavendran. Before the two executions in 2012, the last execution in India had been that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee in August 2004. This move to resume executions has set the country against the regional and global trend towards abolition of the death penalty. The authorities used to make information about the rejection of mercy petitions and dates of execution available to the public before any executions. In resolution 2005/59 the UN Commission on Human Rights called upon all states that still maintain the death penalty "to make available to the public information with regard to the imposition of the death penalty and to any scheduled execution". In total, 140 countries are abolitionist in law or in practice. In 2011, only 21 states in the world executed, meaning that 90 per cent of the world was execution-free. Out of 41 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, 17 have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, 10 are abolitionist in practice and one – Fiji – uses the death penalty only for exceptional military crimes. Over the past 10 years, four Asia-Pacific countries abolished the death penalty for all crimes: Bhutan and Samoa in 2004, the Philippines in 2006 and the Cook Islands in 2007. In 2012, Mongolia became a State Party to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. UN bodies and mechanisms have repeatedly called upon member states to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty, including through the adoption of four UN General Assembly resolutions, in December 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2012. India voted against all four resolutions. In a general comment on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which India is a State Party, the UN Human Rights Committee stated that Article 6 "refers generally to abolition [of the death penalty] in terms which strongly suggest ... that abolition is desirable. The Committee concludes that all measures of abolition should be considered as progress in the enjoyment of the right to life." Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, regardless of the nature of the crime; guilt, innocence or other characteristics of the individual; or the method used by the state to carry out the execution.

Names: Gurmeet Singh, Dharampal, Suresh, Ramji, Praveen Kumar, Jafar Ali, Sonia (f), Sanjeev, and Sundar Singh
Gender m/f: both

Further information on UA: 337/12 Index: ASA 20/008/2013

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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

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Nine prisoners at risk of execution in India: Amnesty International

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