75 death sentences in India last year (2015): Amnesty

Shemin Joy NEW DELHI, Apr 06, 2016, DHNS, APR 06 2016, 00:39AM IST

At least 75 people were sentenced to death in India last year with some imposed by special courts, whose proceedings did not meet international fair trial standards, a report has claimed. 

The report “Death sentences and Executions in 2015” released by Amnesty International on Tuesday also said there were at least 1,634 executions in 25 countries in 2015, which included one in India where Mumbai serial blast convict Yakub Memon was hanged. The number of executions could rise as Amnesty said it could not access data from China, which is a “state secret”. The executions for 2015 were the highest in last 25 years, it said adding it was more than 50% compared to 2014 figure of 1,061 in 22 countries. Iran follows China with 977 executions, Pakistan 326 and Saudi Arabia 158. 

While India had around 75 death sentences last year, Egypt was on the top of the list aer China with 538, Bangladesh 197, Nigeria 171 and Pakistan 121. In India, almost all death sentences were for murder while at least four people were sentenced to gallows for aggravated circumstances of rape following amendments to the Criminal Code in 2013. At least 320 people remained under sentence of death at the end of 2015. 

The Amnesty report also claimed that special courts whose proceedings “did not meet international fair trial standards” imposed death sentences in Bangladesh and India. On Memon’s execution, the report said: “he had been convicted under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act 1987, a law that contains provisions incompatible with international fair trial standards”. The number of death sentences could rise as the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has not provided this year’s official figures. In 2014, Amnesty had reported at least 64 death sentences while later NCRB reported that there were 95 such sentences in 2014. 

The report also noted that courts and authorities had commuted a number of death sentences during the year. Three prisoners whose mercy petitions the president had rejected in 2014 had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonments by courts. The Amnesty also found fault with the law commission for falling short of recommending abolition of death penalty for all crimes. The commission had suggested retention of death penalty for terrorism-related offences.

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/content/538813/75-death-sentences-india-last.html (Accessed 20 December 2018)

India one of top 10 nations where death sentences were handed out last year

Kounteya Sinha & Anahita Mukherji, TNN | Apr 1, 2015, 06.35AM IST

LONDON/MUMBAI: Indian courts sentenced 64 people to death in 2014, making India one of the top 10 in a list of 55 countries where such sentences were handed out last year.

India was also one of seven countries that had executed people on 2013, but carried out no executions in 2014, Amnesty International's Death Penalty Report 2015 released on Tuesday noted.

The figures from India mirror worldwide data, which shows a 22% decrease in executions in 2014 compared with the previous year, but a 28% increase in death sentences when compared with 2013.

While at least 607 people were executed worldwide in 2014, 2,466 were sentenced to death. Three countries — Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia — were responsible for 72% of the 607 recorded executions.

The figure for executions represents the minimum number of people executed, as data on the death penalty is a state secret in Belarus, China and Vietnam, while little or no information was available from countries like Syria and North Korea.

Though China does not release official figures for the death penalty, Amnesty International monitored executions in the country and found them to be more that the rest of the world put together.

Amnesty has taken a clear stand against the death sentence. "Governments using the death penalty to tackle crime are deluding themselves. There is no evidence that the threat of execution is a greater deterrent to crime than any other punishment," Amnesty International secretary general Salil Shetty said. 

"Governments must stop justifying judicial killing on the notion that it has a unique deterrent effect," added Amnesty's death penalty expert Chiara Sangiorgio.

The Death Penalty Research Project of the National Law University (Delhi) found 270 people in India were currently on death row, while eight had their mercy petitions rejected in 2014.

The 64 new death sentences handed out in India last year were for murder and, for the first time since the 2013 amendment to the criminal law, for rape by repeat offenders.

"In India, as with a lot of other countries, violence against women has been used to justify the death penalty. And yet, study after study across the world shows that there is no proof that death penalty is a greater deterrent for crime than imprisonment," said Shailesh Rai, senior policy advisor at Amnesty International India.

He said handing out death sentences is mere tokenism, and evades the real problem which can only be solved through judicial and police reforms.

"The conviction rate for rape in India is 27% and this is only for cases that make it to the trial stage. Only one in 100 cases of sexual violence are reported. When the certainty of punishment is so low, increasing the severity of punishment at the end of a long and tedious process makes for a false argument in support of the death sentence."

The execution of Afzal Guru, points out Rai, is an instance where the death penalty was used as a political tool, rather than a tool for criminal justice. India hanged him in secret in February 2013.

In a landmark judgment in January 2014, the Supreme Court commuted the death sentences of 15 people — 13 on the grounds of an inordinate delay in hearing their mercy petitions, and two on the grounds of mental illness.

The judgment noted that an "undue, inordinate and unreasonable delay in execution of death sentence amounted to torture".

The Asia-Pacific region recorded a decline in the number of death sentences in 2014 compared with the previous year, largely because Bangladesh recorded a very high number of death sentences in 2013.

Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on executing civilians after the attack on a Peshawar school. Incidentally, the US is the only country in the Americas to carry out executions.

From 1995 to 2014, Amnesty recorded a 66% increase in the number of countries abolishing the death penalty, from 59 to 98.

During this period, there has also been a nearly 50% decline in the number of countries carrying out executions, which came down from 41 to 22.

Death Sentence And Executions 2014: Amnesty International report

Executions took place in 22 countries in 2014, the same number of countries as in 2013

At least 607 executions were carried out worldwide, a decrease of almost 22% compared with 2013. (China not included, doesn't share data)

At least 2,466 people are known to have been sentenced to death in 2014, a 28% increase compared with 2013 (largely because of Egypt/Nigeria)

7 countries, including India that executed convicts in 2013 did not do so in 2014

While the government of India scheduled several executions in 2014, none were carried out

Over 64 people in India sentenced to death in 2014

270 people in India were under the sentence of death and that eight people had their mercy petitions rejected in 2014

Pakistan lifted 6-year moratorium on the execution of civilians in the wake of the Peshawar school attack.

Commutations or pardons of death sentences recorded in 28 countries including India.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/India-one-of-top-10-nations-where-death-sentences-were-handed-out-last-year/articleshow/46764947.cms [last accessed 09 April 2015]

Death Penalty in India: “One hardly finds a rich or affluent person going to the gallows”

17 April 2013 Amnesty International
In November 2012, Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks, was hanged in the country’s first execution in more than eight years. Three months later, Afzal Guru was executed after his clemency petition was rejected by the President; Guru had been convicted in 2005 of being involved in the 2001 attack on Parliament.
More recently, the government has expanded the scope of the death penalty by amending laws to provide for this punishment in certain cases of rape.
The Supreme Court last week also rejected an appeal against the decision by the President to reject Devender Pal Singh’s mercy petition. In a trial that has raised serious fair trial concerns, Devender Pal Singh was found guilty of planning an explosion that killed nine people in 1993. His sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2002 and he has been on death row since.
The recent decision of the Supreme Court is likely to affect at least 17 more prisoners who are asking for commutation of their death sentences on the grounds of delay in the disposal of their mercy petitions by the President.

Justice A. P. Shah, a former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, is one of the most outspoken opponents of capital punishment in the country. He shared his views on the death penalty in this interview with Amnesty International.

What is the state of the death penalty in India?
India has carried out only very few executions since the 1990s. However, the brutal gang rape of a 23-year old woman in Delhi last year intensified public calls for the imposition of the death penalty.

Why should India abolish the death penalty?
Whether an accused is sentenced to death or not is an arbitrary matter and depends on a number of factors, ranging from the competence of the legal representation to the interest of the central government in a particular case and the personal predilections of the judges.
It is beyond any shred of doubt that in India, it is the judges’ subjective discretion that eventually decides the fate of an accused.
Also, confessions and witness testimonies play a more vital role in India than in many other countries, given that forensic and other scientific evidence are not so frequently adopted here.
Most death sentences are awarded on circumstantial evidence alone. Even the use of professionally trained witnesses by the police is common.

Why do you say the death penalty is discriminatory?
In India, it is largely cases involving the poor and the down-trodden - who are the victims of class-bias - which result in an imposition of a death penalty. Here one hardly finds a rich or affluent person going to the gallows.
Therefore, it is apparent that the death penalty, as it is used now, is discriminatory. It strikes mostly against the disadvantaged sections of society, showing its arbitrary and capricious nature - thus rendering it unconstitutional.
You have expressed concerns about the execution of Afzal Guru, who was convicted of being involved in 2001 attack on Parliament in Delhi
Several disturbing trends emerge from his execution, which must be highlighted.
For example, the rejection of his clemency petition by the President on 3 February 2013 was kept a secret and was not communicated to his family. Afzal Guru was executed within a week without his family being informed and his body was buried secretly. There are also serious doubts about the quality of evidence and whether he was adequately represented legally during his trial.

What’s the future of the death penalty in India?
The global trend is increasingly and overwhelmingly in favour of abolition.
We would be deluding ourselves if we were to believe that the execution of a few persons sentenced to death will provide a solution to the unacceptably high rates of crime. In reality, capital punishment does not have any deterrent effect.

Justice A. P. Shah is one of 14 retired judges who last year called on the Indian President to commute 13 death sentences that, they maintain, were imposed in a manner inconsistent with the law.

Source : http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/death-penalty-india-one-hardly-finds-rich-or-affluent-person-going-gallows-2013-04-17

Amnesty International Reports on Death Penalty Trends

By RICK GLADSTONE

Published: April 9, 2013, THE NEW YORK TIMES

At least four countries that had not used the death penalty in some time — India, Japan, Pakistan and Gambia — resumed doing so last year, the rights organization Amnesty International says in its annual compilation of capital punishment trends. 

Amnesty, the London-based group that has made abolition of the death penalty one of its signature causes, also says the number of executions in Iraq nearly doubled in 2012 compared with a year earlier, which it characterized as “an alarming escalation.”Nonetheless, its yearly review, released early Wednesday in London, said the overall shift away from death sentences and executions continued in 2012. 

“In many parts of the world, executions are becoming a thing of the past, ” Salil Shetty, secretary general of the organization, said in a statement. Amnesty said only 21 countries were recorded as having carried out executions in 2012, the same as in 2011, but down from 28 countries a decade earlier.It said at least 682 executions were known to have been carried out worldwide in 2012, two more than 2011, and at least 1,722 death sentences were imposed in 58 countries, compared with 1,923 imposed in 63 countries the year before. 

“Only one in 10 countries in the world carries out executions,” Mr. Shetty said. “Their leaders should ask themselves why they are still applying a cruel and inhumane punishment that the rest of the world is leaving behind.” Amnesty also pointed out that its compilation excluded what it said were the thousands of executions it believes were carried out in China, where the number of capital punishment cases is kept secret. The organization said it still believed China remained the world’s top executioner. 

Besides China, the top executors in 2012, Amnesty said, were Iran with 314, Iraq with 129, Saudi Arabia with 79 and the United States with 43. The report also noted that only nine American states executed prisoners in 2012, compared with 13 the year before, and that in April, Connecticut became the 17th state to abolish the death penalty. 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/world/amnesty-international-reports-on-death-penalty-trends.html?_r=0 [accessed on 10th April 2013]