Abolish Death Penalty India: Larger bench of SC to hear pleas of death row convicts

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Larger bench of SC to hear pleas of death row convicts

Press Trust of India | Posted on Jul 26, 2013 at 06:26pm IST

New Delhi: A larger bench of the Supreme Court will hear from October 22 a batch of petitions seeking commutation of their death sentence into life imprisonment on account of delay in carrying out the execution following the dismissal of their mercy petitions by the President.
"Death sentence matters will be taken up immediately after the Dussehra holidays from October 22," a bench, comprising Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi, said.
Before taking over as the CJI, Justice Sathasivam had said that there was a need for "authoritative pronouncements" by a larger bench or a Constitution Bench on issues like mercy pleas to avoid conflicting views by smaller benches.

The hearing by a larger bench assumes significance as on April 12, a two-judge bench had held that long delay in disposing off mercy pleas by the President or the Governor of persons convicted under anti-terror laws or similar statutes cannot be a ground for commutation of death sentence. The ruling was pronounced while rejecting the plea of Khalistani terrorist and death row convict Devinderpal Singh Bhullar.
When the April 12 judgement was delivered, there were over 20 convicts facing execution. Later on, an apex court bench had granted relief to a condemned prisoner M N Das who had sought conversion of his death sentence to life imprisonment on the ground of delay in deciding his mercy plea.
On February 18 this year, a bench headed by Justice Sathasivam, which in an urgent hearing had stayed the execution of death sentence of sandalwood smuggler Veerapan's associates in a Karnataka jail, had said it would wait for the Bhullar's case judgement before dealing with other identical petitions.
It had stayed the execution of death sentence of Veerappan's elder brother Gnanaprakash and his aides Simon, Meesekar Madaiah and Bilavendran.
The outcome of the hearing before a larger bench will also have its bearing on three persons Murgan, Santhan and Perarivalan who are awaiting execution after conviction under TADA in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. A bench headed by Justice Sathasivam had on April 6 stayed the execution of eight more death row prisoners, convicted in different murder cases, whose clemency pleas were rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee.
The eight convicts facing death row in different cases are Suresh, Ramji, Gurmeet Singh, Praveen Kumar, Sonia and her
husband Sanjeev, Sundar Singh and Jafar Ali. The apex court had passed the orders on the plea of either the convicts or civil rights group and public spirited persons who had filed the petitions on behalf of the death row persons.
In its petition, Peoples Union of Democratic Rights (PUDR) had challenged the rejection of the mercy pleas of the eight convicts contending there has been delay in carrying out their execution even after it was confirmed by the apex court.
While Suresh, Ramji, Gurmeet Singh and Jafar Ali are lodged in prisons in Uttar Pradesh, former Haryana MLA Ralu
Ram Punia's daughter Sonia and her husband Sanjeev are jailed in Haryana. Praveen is in a Karnataka jail and Sundar Singh is
an inmate in a prison in Uttaranchal. Sonia and Sanjeev were awarded death penalty for killing eight members of her family, including her parents and three children of her brother, in 2001.
Gurmeet Singh was convicted for killing 13 of his family members in 1986. Jafar Ali murdered his wife and five daughters. Suresh and Ramji killed five of their relatives.

Source : http://ibnlive.in.com/news/larger-bench-of-sc-to-hear-pleas-of-death-row-convicts/409628-3.html

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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, July 28, 2013

Larger bench of SC to hear pleas of death row convicts

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