Abolish Death Penalty India: Assam - Reprieve for death row convict- President commutes Jorhat jail prisoner's sentence to life

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Assam - Reprieve for death row convict- President commutes Jorhat jail prisoner's sentence to life

Saturday , March 28 , 2015

Jorhat, March 27: The commutation of the death sentence of Bahadur Dewan alias Tote Dewan - a death row convict lodged at the Central Jail Jorhat - to life sentence by President Pranab Mukherjee yesterday has ended the uncertainty in the prisoner's life.

The prisoner had filed a mercy petition before the President almost a year ago. Earlier, a similar mercy petition had remained pending with the Assam governor for eight years, with the then governor J.B. Patnaik rejecting the plea on December 23, 2013. Dewan, 66, had sent his mercy petition to Rashtrapati Bhavan through the jail authorities, who forwarded it to the state home department on February 10, 2014.

Dewan had requested jail officials to assist him in filing the mercy petition to the President, as he has no family and no one has come to the jail to meet him till date, prison sources said. Dewan, who hails from Seshapukhuri Nepali Basti under Morhanhat police station in Sivasagar district, had hacked to death his wife Gouri, 35, sons Rajib, 10, and eight-month-old Kajib, and neighbour Budhimaya Dewan, 60, on September 30, 2002.

He reportedly had a quarrel with his wife the night before and after waking up early next morning, he picked up a dao (machete) and hacked Gouri and their two sons to death. He then knocked on the door of his neighbour Budhimaya and when she opened it, killed her as well. He has been lodged in Central Jail Jorhat since he was shifted from Sivasagar District Jail on April 12, 2004. The death sentence was awarded to him by the Sivasagar district and sessions court on December 26, 2003 followed by confirmation of the sentence by Gauhati High Court on April 28, 2005, and then by the Supreme Court on August 8, 2005.

Central Jail Jorhat, jailor Sanjib Kumar Chetia told The Telegraph that no official communication has been received regarding commutation of the death sentence till late this afternoon. Chetia, however, said based on media reports, the authorities had informed Dewan about the development. "Some prison inmates read about it (commutation) in the newspapers and could have told Dewan, so we thought we should inform him before he comes to know about the matter from inmates," Chetia said. He added that Dewan was told that the official letter in this regard was yet to arrive. The jailor said Dewan, who mostly keeps to himself and hardly speaks with other prisoners, smiled on hearing that he has been spared the gallows.

Chetia said Dewan thanked the jail officials, who had drafted the mercy plea and asked him whether there was any legal option available to him to petition the government to set him free. The jailor had assured him (Dewan) that he would discuss the matter with his senior officials and let him know. Chetia said the death row convict works in the jail garden voluntarily and is very possessive about the flowers. "Dewan's conduct is good and he seldom interacts with jail staff and other inmates," he added. Chetia said Dewan earns Rs 55 a day for working in the jail garden and uses the money to buy necessary items. In his plea to the President, Dewan has said he committed the murders because of an "unsound state of mind" and later surrendered himself to police. "I had no motive to commit such a crime but owing to my mental insanity I could not control my rage. Sir, I have already spent 11 years in jail and I repent my act and assure you I shall never indulge in any kind of confrontation in jail........." Dewan said in his plea.

Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150328/jsp/frontpage/story_11280.jsp#.VSZ5V_mUeQo [last accessed 09 April 2015]

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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

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Assam - Reprieve for death row convict- President commutes Jorhat jail prisoner's sentence to life

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