Abolish Death Penalty India: Jigisha Ghosh murder case: Two convicts get death sentence, life imprisonment for one (New Delhi)

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Jigisha Ghosh murder case: Two convicts get death sentence, life imprisonment for one (New Delhi)

Written by Aamir Khan |New Delhi |Updated: August 23, 2016 7:21:02 pm

Jigisha, an operations manager at Hewitt Associates Pvt Ltd in Noida, was abducted and murdered in March 2009.

Pointing out the need to curb “gruesome crimes” against women, a Delhi sessions court Monday awarded the death penalty to two of the three men convicted of abducting and killing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh in 2009.“Crime in the present case was committed against a woman. Gruesome crimes against women are on the rise in recent years,” observed Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav. The court, therefore, decided not to show any leniency in such cases as it would have sent a “very wrong message” to the society and “encourage” criminals like the three convicts.

“Passing appropriate sentence in such cases will go a long way in arresting the increasing trend of crime against women,” said the court. It added that “protection of the society and deterring criminals was the avowed object of law, achieved by imposing appropriate punishment”. While Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla were awarded capital punishment, Baljeet Malik was sentenced to life imprisonment, given the scope of his reformation. The trio had been held guilty earlier this year under relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code including murder, abduction and robbery.

Following the conviction of the accused, the court had directed the Delhi government to appoint a Probationary Officer (PO) to get information from the jail, a clinical psychologist, sociologist, parents of the convicts and their neighbours on the conduct of the accused. The report, deliberating whether or not the convicts could be reformed, was relied upon by the court before it decided on the quantum of their punishment.

The court observed that the crime was carried out “in cold blood” and in an “inhuman and cruel” manner. “The innocent, helpless and vulnerable victim remained in the captivity of the convicts for hours. The victim pleaded to the convicts not to take her life. She handed over her debit card and other belongings to the convicts. She also disclosed to them her debit card PIN number. However, the convicts were satisfied only by brutally mauling her to death. In other words, the convicts behaved in an uncivilised and barbaric manner against a helpless girl,” said the court. According to the court, which took into consideration the PO’s report, the “magnitude” and “brutality” shown by the convicts while killing Jigisha was enough for the case to fall in the “rarest of rare” category.

In Kapoor’s case, the PO did not see any room for reformation. The report asserted that the convict, if shown leniency, would be a threat to the society. “Since there is no possibility of reformation and rehabilitation of Kapoor, and apprehension that he will continue to be a threat to the society, the convict deserves death penalty,” the court observed from the report. For Shukla too, the PO’s report sought death penalty, pointing out his notorious behaviour and unsatisfactory conduct. “It is also mentioned in the report that an extortion case was registered against convict Amit Shukla while he was in jail,” said the court.

The report also said Shukla had been booked in seven other cases, including a murder case, and sought death penalty. Contrary to the report on the duo’s conduct, Malik was found to be “good-natured” and showed “scope of improvement”. “Baljeet Malik has been a well-behaved boy in his village. He was 20 at the time of commission of crime. It appears he got involved in the crime because of his association with bad elements and, hence, he should be given a chance to reform and rehabilitate himself,” said the court. The court also found it to be a fit case of compensation to the victim’s parents. Taking note of a report filed by the case’s investigating officer Atul Kumar, the court observed that Shukla and Baljeet were financially sound and had both moveable and immovable properties.

Of the total fine imposed on the three convicts, the court directed that Rs 6 lakh in compensation be paid to the parents of the victims. “No amount of compensation can alleviate the agony, pain and trauma of the parents of the victim… However, monetary compensation would provide some solace,” said the court. The District Legal Service Authority (south), has also been directed to provide adequate monetary aid to Jigisha’s parents.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/jigisha-ghosh-murder-verdict-death-for-2-life-for-1-2990018/

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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, December 20, 2018

Jigisha Ghosh murder case: Two convicts get death sentence, life imprisonment for one (New Delhi)

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