Abolish Death Penalty India: May 2014

Friday, May 2, 2014

India Red Fort: Court stays attacker's death penalty

28 April 2014 Last updated at 08:13 GMT

India's Supreme Court has put on hold the death sentence of Mohammad Arif, a Pakistani man convicted of attacking Delhi's Red Fort in December 2000.

The judges accepted his lawyer's argument that there had been a long delay in deciding his case.

Arif, also known as Ashfaq Arif, was a Lashkar-e-Taiba militant who was convicted in 2005. The Supreme Court confirmed his sentence in 2011. Three people died in the attack on the 17th Century fort, an Indian landmark. Arif's is the latest in a series of high-profile cases in which the Supreme Court has commuted death sentences because those facing execution have spent so long on death row.

In February, the court commuted the death sentences of three men convicted of plotting the 1991 assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. And in January, the court had commuted the sentences of 15 death row prisoners to life in jail on the grounds of delay. On Monday, the Supreme Court ordered that a larger "constitution" bench be set up to decide Arif's case.

His lawyer had argued in the court that hanging Arif would be a violation of the constitution since he had already spent more than 13 years in jail. Arif was arrested along with his wife, Rehmana Yousuf Farooqui, four days after the Red Fort attack and found guilty of murder, criminal conspiracy and waging war against India. The trial court convicted him and six others in October 2005. He was sentenced to death, while the others received jail terms of varying lengths.

In September 2007, the high court upheld his conviction, but ordered the release of the others for lack of evidence. The Supreme Court confirmed his death penalty in 2011.

India rarely carries out executions, which are often delayed indefinitely or commuted by the president.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27184340 [accessed on 2nd May 2014]

HC commutes death penalty of 3

Abhinav Garg,TNN | May 2, 2014, 03.32 AM IST

NEW DELHI: Despite the brutality of the crime committed by them, Delhi high court has commuted the death sentence of three people accused of murder based on their conduct in jail and the possibility of reform.

A division bench of justices S Muralidhar and Mukta Gupta commuted the death penalty awarded to a man and his relatives for killing the man's wife saying the case did not fall in the "rarest of the rare category" warranting capital punishment.

"The nominal roll of the three accused shows that their conduct in jail is satisfactory thus far. None of them were previous offenders. More importantly there was no material whatsoever placed by the state before the trial court or this court which would help conclude that the three accused are likely to commit a crime in the future or are incapable of being reformed," the bench noted while reducing the punishment.

The high court also faulted the trial court for ignoring mitigating circumstances and said the court appears to have taken note essentially of the fact that an innocent, helpless woman has been murdered in a very brutal manner. "The trial court has not analyzed the role of each of the accused and the mitigating factors vis-a-vis each of them," it added saying it is "not persuaded to hold that the crime can be characterized as a 'rarest of rare' case".

The bench commuted the death sentence of Surender Singh, his brother Narender Singh and their mother Lakhpati Devi. They have been accused of killing Urmila, Surender's wife. Appearing for the prosecution, additional public prosecutor Varun Goswamy had submitted that the murder fell in the category of "rarest of rare" case as a helpless woman was murdered by the three accused in the "most brutal and dastardly manner".

However, the bench said, "Unless the court is satisfied that there are absolutely no mitigating circumstances and that the case falls under the category of 'rarest of rare', it should not award the death sentence."

Urmila was murdered by her husband and two relatives on the intervening night of October 15/16, 2007 in front of her three children after she demanded that a piece of land be transferred in her childrens' name.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/City/Delhi/HC-commutes-death-penalty-of-3/articleshow/34504084.cms [accessed 2nd May 2014]

Man gets death sentence in rape and murder case

Press Trust of India | Krishnagar (WB)

April 29, 2014 Last Updated at 19:40 IST

A man was sentenced to death by a Nadia district court for raping and killing a minor girl.

Additional District Session Judge Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay yesterday awarded capital punishment to Bimal Sardar (24) and imposed a fine of Rs 2.20 lakh. According to prosecution, the victim girl, a student of class VII, did not return home after completion of her examination on June 10 last year.

Locals then beat him up and handed him over to the police.

Her almost naked body, with the throat slit, was found in a field the next day by Sardar who informed local people about it.

The locals, however, got suspicious of Sardar's behaviour and started grilling him. At one point of time, he broke down and confessed that he had raped and killed her.

Source:http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/man-gets-death-sentence-in-rape-and-murder-case-114042901266_1.html [accessed on 2nd May 2014]

Indian Supreme Court refuses to release 7 assassins of former PM Rajiv Gandhi

Source:Xinhua Published: 2014-4-25 16:16:12

India's Supreme Court Friday refused to release seven assassins of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi from prison, and referred the case to a five-judge Constitution Bench.

A bench, headed by Chief Justice P. Sathasivam, also framed seven questions to be addressed by the Constitution Bench, including whether after commutation of the death sentence into life in jail, they can be released, and whether the central government or the Tamil Nadu government can do so.

The seven assassins are currently lodged in a jail in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and each has spent more than 20 years in prison.

In February, the Supreme Court had commuted the death sentences of three of the convicts -- Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan -- who were on death row, citing an inordinate delay in disposing of their mercy petitions by the Indian president.

The other four assassins in the case have been serving life imprisonment.

After the apex court ruling, Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa had said all the seven would be released, compelling the central government to challenge the order.

"The release of the killers of a former prime minister of India and our great leader, as well as several other innocent Indians, would be contrary to all principles of justice," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said in response to Jayalalithaa's announcement.

Rajiv Gandhi, who was India's prime minister from 1984 to 1989, was killed by Dhanu, a Sri Lankan suicide bomber from the now- defunct Tamil Tigers, during an election rally at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991.

Some 26 people were convicted in the case in 1998 by a special court which sentenced all of them to death. But, in 1999, the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentences of four -- Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan and Nalini.

However, Nalini's death sentence was commuted to life in jail, following the intervention of Rajiv Gandhi's widow and ruling Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, as she gave birth to a girl in jail.

Source: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/856820.shtml#.U2PuGfmSwrU [accessed on 2nd May 2014]]

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