Abolish Death Penalty India: Law panel recommends abolishing death penalty except in terror cases

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Law panel recommends abolishing death penalty except in terror cases

Updated: Aug 31, 2015 23:39 IST, Avantika Mehta, Hindustan Times

The law commission has recommended abolishing the death penalty in all cases except those with charges of terrorism and waging war against the state.

The Law Commission on Monday recommended abolition of the death penalty in all but terrorism and sedition cases, in line with the “evolving standards of human dignity and decency”, signifying a more nuanced legal approach amid a national debate on capital punishment. After the issue hit the headlines recently over the execution of 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon, the commission noted that capital punishment failed as a deterrent and it was retributive justice which was “indefensible”, though it must be retained for terrorism-related cases in the interest of national security. “The notion of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ has no place in our constitutionally mediated criminal justice system,” a nine-member panel of the Law Commission said in its 262nd report and added that time had come for India join the 140 countries that have abolished the death penalty, recommending a phased abolition.

Though the government has received the report, the recommendations are not binding on it. Many of the panel’s past reports are gathering dust. The commission analysed and relied upon many orders from the Supreme Court to confirm its findings that “there exists no principled method to remove such arbitrariness from capital sentencing”. It added that a lack of resources, poor investigations, and ineffective prosecution and legal aid were problems plaguing the judicial system. “Continued administration of death penalty asks…questions related to the miscarriage of justice, errors, as well as the plight of the poor and disenfranchised in the criminal justice system… administration of death penalty even within the restrictive environment of ‘rarest of rare’ doctrine is constitutionally unsustainable,” it said.

Three of the nine panel members recorded their dissent to the report. Justice (retd) Usha Mehra, a full-time panel member, and both the ex-officio members -- law secretary PK Malhotra and legislative secretary Sanjay Singh -- supported retaining the death penalty. The commission’s head, Justice AP Shah, who retired on Monday, noted in the report that the irreversible punishment was open to human error, even at the stage of clemency and mercy powers. “Even the exercise of mercy powers is sometimes vitiated by gross procedural violations and non-application of mind,” the report said, adding that “safeguards in the law have failed in providing a constitutionally secure environment for administration of this irrevocable punishment”.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/law-panel-recommends-abolishing-death-penalty-except-in-terror-cases/story-cvcuNeAm8ZyOvhq505W7BL.html (Accessed on 18 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

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Law panel recommends abolishing death penalty except in terror cases

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