Abolish Death Penalty India: Allahabad

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Tuesday, December 25, 2018

SC Stays Execution Of Death Penalty In 7-Yr-Old Rape And Murder Case (Uttar Pradesh)

BY: ASHOK KINI SEPTEMBER 1, 2018 7:07 PM

“The sex maniacs are prowling in the society like wild wolves to quench their sinful bodily lust. They leave no stone unturned. In this evil pursuit they even do not spare infants and children,” the high court had said in the judgment.

The Supreme Court has stayed execution of death penalty imposed on a man accused of rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl. Calling for the records from the high court, the bench headed by the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra ordered that the death sentence imposed on Pappu shall not be executed. On 6 October 2017, a division bench of Allahabad High Court had affirmed conviction and death sentence imposed by the trial court on Pappu. The prosecution case was that accused Pappu allured the 7-year-old girl to provide her lychee as a prelude to his sinister design which resulted in her kidnapping, brutal rape, and gruesome murder; which culminated in concealing her dead body near the banks of a river beside the bushes. The session’s court had awarded death penalty to the accused after convicting him.

While confirming the death sentence, the bench had held that this is a ‘rarest of rare cases’ where the sentence of death is eminently desirable not only to deter others from committing such atrocious crimes but also to give emphatic expression to society’s an abhorrence of such crime. “The accused person-appellant Pappu who belonged to the same caste, social strata and native place of the deceased minor girl Amrata; allured her to provide her Lychee apparently as a prelude to his sinister design which resulted in her kidnapping, brutal rape and gruesome murder-as the numerous ante-mortem injuries on her person testify; which culminated in concealing her dead body near the banks of the river beside the bushes and innocent helpless and hapless girl of 7 years was subjected to such barbaric treatment by a person who was in a position to win her trust. His culpability is of enormous proportion and arouses a sense of revulsion in the mind of the common man,” the bench had remarked It had also said: “The sex maniacs are prowling in the society like wild wolves to quench their sinful bodily lust. They leave no stone unturned. In this evil pursuit they even do not spare infants and children.”

Source: https://www.livelaw.in/sc-stays-execution-of-death-penalty-in-7-yr-old-rape-and-murder-case-read-order/ (Accessed 25 December 2018)

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Convicts can't be hanged secretly and hurriedly: Supreme Court

Amit Anand Choudhary,TNN | May 28, 2015, 02.24 AM IST

NEW DELHI: Condemned prisoners also have a right to dignity, the Supreme Court has said holding that execution of death sentence cannot be carried out in an arbitrary, hurried and secret manner without allowing death row convicts to exhaust all legal remedies and meet family members.

"Right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution does not end with the confirmation of the death sentence. Even in cases of death row convicts, their right to dignity must be protected," said a bench of justices A K Sikri and U U Lalit while quashing the execution warrants of a young woman and her lover, convicted for killing seven members of her family including a 10-month-old baby in Uttar Pradesh in 2008.

The court's observations assume significance in the context of the hue and cry raised by human rights activists after Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru was hanged in the capital's Tihar jail in 2013 even before his family members could get the intimation.

In case of the couple — Shabnam and Saleem — the bench said, "We find that death warrant was signed by the sessions judge in haste without waiting for convict to exhaust all legal remedies." It pointed out that the condemned prisoners can file review petition before the Supreme Court and can also seek mercy from the the President or Governor for commuting their sentence.

Referring to the Allahabad HC order on procedure to be followed for execution of death sentence, the bench said the principles of natural justice must be followed and sufficient notice given to the convict before the issuance of death warrant to enable him/her to pursue legal recourse and have a final meeting with family members before execution. In cases where a convict is not in a position to get legal assistance, legal aid must be provided, it said.

The bench expressed surprised on the "unwarranted" haste with which the Amroha court issued execution warrants, just six days after the Supreme Court awarded death sentence to the couple on May 15 for wiping out the woman's entire family— parents, two brothers, sister-in-law and two minors - to remove opposition to their affair and also grab family property.

Appearing for the death row convicts, senior advocates Anand Grover and Raju Ramachandaran contended that guidelines laid down by SC and Allahabad HC were given a go-by the sessions court and pleaded for quashing of the warrant.

The apex court said the sessions court issued the warrant without waiting for the mandatory 30 days to allow death row convicts to avail judicial remedy of filing petitions for a review.

Among the mandatory guidelines are that the death-row convicts have the right to meet their family members. The guidelines are intended to make the execution least painful.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Convicts-cant-be-hanged-secretly-and-hurriedly-Supreme-Court/articleshow/47450451.cms [last accessed 28.05.2015]

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

HC acquits 7 men awarded death penalty in honour killing case

PTI | Jul 13, 2013, 09.53PM IST

ALLAHABAD: Due to lack of evidence, the Allahabad high court has let off seven persons, who were awarded death sentence by a lower court in connection with an alleged honour killing case of Badaun district in Uttar Pradesh.

A division bench comprising Justice Amar Saran and Justice Pankaj Naqvi on Friday ordered "the release of Natthu, Rakesh, Mahavir, Viresh, Jai Prakash, Pappu and Gulab Singh" holding that they "stand acquitted of charges they had been found guilty of".

The appellants had challenged July 30, 2012 order of additional sessions judge, Badaun.

They were awarded death sentence for allegedly burning alive Deen Dayal and Anita in a village under Gunnaur police station of the district on the intervening night of May 22-23, 2006.

Anita was the daughter of one of the appellants, Natthu.

The girl's affair with Deen Dayal was said to have been bitterly opposed by her family.

However, during the trial, Natthu denied his involvement in the incident and claimed that the remaining six accused had "resorted to this abhorrent crime to grab his property".

The high court struck down the conviction of all the seven accused observing that the trial court had convicted them "on the strength of the statement" given by Natthu, which was "not a substantive piece of evidence which could have nailed the other set of accused persons".

"The trial court was swayed by the fact Natthu in his statement ... had admitted his presence at the scene of occurrence," the court noted, adding "this approach was absolutely de hors the law.

The prosecution had failed to prove the case, in the mode and manner as alleged by them beyond a reasonable doubt.

Source : http://m.timesofindia.com/city/lucknow/HC-acquits-7-men-awarded-death-penalty-in-honour-killing-case/articleshow/21060034.cms

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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