Abolish Death Penalty India: 7/11 blasts verdict: Court convicts 12 out of 13 accused, all face death penalty

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

7/11 blasts verdict: Court convicts 12 out of 13 accused, all face death penalty

Sep 11, 2015 16:48:27 IST

PTI

Mumbai: Nine years after serial bomb blasts in trains rattled Mumbai killing 188 people, a special court here today convicted 12 accused, all allegedly having links with banned SIMI, holding five of them guilty for murder which could attract death penalty. Delivering the verdict, the Special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) Judge Yatin D Shinde held 12 of the 13 accused guilty while acquitting one of them. The convicts were allegedly linked to the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The accused were found guilty of charges under IPC, Explosives Act, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act and Indian Railway Act and those under MCOCA.

Train Blasts - 11 July 2006

Five of the accused were found guilty of murder (IPC 302). The court also found all the 12 accused guilty under Section 3 (1) (i) of MCOCA, which could also attract capital punishment. Those convicted today are Kamal Ahamed Ansari (37), Tanvir Ahmed Ansari (37), Mohd Faisal Shaikh (36), Ehtesham Siddiqui (30), Mohammad Majid Shafi (32), Shaikh Alam Shaikh (41), Mohd Sajid Ansari (34),Muzzammil Shaikh (27), Soheil Mehmood Shaikh (43), Zamir Ahmad Shaikh (36), Naveed Hussain Khan (30) and Asif Khan (38).

During the investigations, 13 accused, all of them Indians, were arrested and brought to trial.The chargesheet filed by Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) in November 2006 had named 30, 17 of them absconding and out which 13 are said to be Pakistan nationals. The absconding include Azam Chima, an alleged Lashker-e- Taiba member. Arguments for the quantum of sentence are likely to begin on Monday.

The ATS chargesheet had said that Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were made in a room in Govandi in suburban Mumbai and some Pakistani nationals were also present during the bomb-making. Seven RDX bombs had exploded in the first class coaches in many suburban trains on July 11, 2006, killing 188 people and injuring 829. In the trial that ran for eight long years, the prosecution examined 192 witnesses, including eight Indian Police Service (IPS) and five Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers as well as 18 doctors. The defence lawyers examined 51 witnesses and one person was called as a court witness.

The blast occurred within a span of 10 minutes between Khar Road-Santacruz, Bandra-Khar Road, Jogeshwari-Mahim Junction, Mira Road- Bhayander, Matunga- Mahim Junction and Borivali. The MCOCA judge had concluded the trial on August 19 last year. The examination of witnesses resumed after two years since the Supreme Court had stayed the trial in 2008. Before the stay, the prosecution had already examined a police officer. The Supreme Court vacated the stay on April 23, 2010. Of the 13 accused arrested by ATS between 20 July, 2006 and 3 October, 2006, 11 had given statements admitting to their involvement in the blasts but later retracted.

The case took a twist when the defence lawyer sought to call Indian Mujahideen co-founder Sadiq Sheikh as defence witness after he told the police in 2008 that IM members were responsbile for all the blasts that happened since 2005 including the train blasts. The court had allowed to examine Sadiq as a defence witness. Reacting to the verdict, former Mumbai police commissioner AN Roy, who had played a key role in the investigation, said he was happy that the court endorsed the chargesheet submitted after thorough investigations by Mumbai police and ATS. "Investigations were done throughly by the Mumbai Police and the ATS. To start with it was a blind case. We had no clue. But I am satisfied with the verdict. Out of the 13 accused who were tried, 12 have been convicted while one is acquitted," he said. BJP, Congress and NCP awelcomed the verdict. On delay in completion of the trial, they suggested that terror cases should be fast-tracked.

Source: https://www.firstpost.com/india/711-blasts-verdict-court-convicts-12-out-of-13-accused-all-face-death-penalty-2430344.html (Accessed on 19 December 2018)

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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, December 19, 2018

7/11 blasts verdict: Court convicts 12 out of 13 accused, all face death penalty

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