Abolish Death Penalty India: Indian Penal Code

Showing posts with label Indian Penal Code. Show all posts

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)

Friday, February 6, 2015

No proposal to abolish death sentence: Govt

Press Trust of India | New Delhi August 5, 2014 Last Updated at 16:40 IST The government today said it has no proposal to abolish capital punishment in the country. "No. At present, there is no proposal in this (Home) Ministry to amend the Indian Penal Code, 1860 to abolish capital punishment in the country," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju informed Lok Sabha. In a written reply, he said the Law Commission posted a consultation paper on capital punishment on its website in May 2014 seeking suggestions and comments on the issue. The minister said in the Code of Criminal Procedure, various sections are already in place for speedy trial and elimination of delays in investigation and trial proceedings. Moreover, amendments have been carried out in the CrPC in 2008 to ensure time-bound conviction and speedy delivery of justice, he said. "Amendment to Section 309 for continuing the proceedings of trial on a day-to-day basis until all the witnesses in attendance have been examined has also been made through Criminal Law (Amendment Act 2013)," Rijiju said. Source: http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/no-proposal-to-abolish-death-sentence-govt-114080501135_1.html [last accessed 06.02.2015]

Monday, July 8, 2013

IPC's Section 364A: Too harsh a provision?

TNN Jul 5, 2013, 04.30AM IST

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court had laid down the "rarest of rare" criteria for courts to award death penalty only in select heinous and gruesome murder cases.
In this background, can Parliament enact a law providing for mandatory award of death penalty for those found guilty of murdering a person after kidnapping him to demand ransom? Would this not amount to pushing every offence of kidnap for ransom involving murder of the victim into 'rarest of rare' category without a judicial determination to that effect?
This question was framed by Justices T S Thakur and S J Mukhopadhaya while referring to a larger bench a petition challenging the constitutional validity of Section 364A of Indian Penal Code, which imposes mandatory death penalty in kidnap for ransom involving murder of the kidnapped.
The petition was filed by one Vikram Singh, who was convicted under Sections 302 (murder) and 364A of the IPC and awarded death penalty on both counts. The apex court had upheld his conviction and sentence.
But in his petition before the Supreme Court, his counsel D K Garg argued that if the court came to the conclusion that punishment provided under Section 364A of IPC was unconstitutional, then a lenient view could be taken on the death penalty awarded to his client under Section 302.
He argued that Section 364A made even a first time offender liable to be punished with death, which was too harsh to be considered just and appropriate.
Appearing for the Union government, additional solicitor general Sidharth Luthra argued, "It is within the legislative competence of Parliament to provide remedies and prescribe punishment for different offences depending upon the nature and gravity of such offences and the societal expectation for weeding out ills that afflict or jeopardize the lives of citizens and the security and safety of vulnerable sections of the society, especially children who are prone to kidnapping for ransom and being brutally done to death if their parents are unable to pay the ransom amount.
"The provisions of Section 364A are not only intended to deal with cases of kidnapping for ransom involving murder of victim but also cases in which terrorists and other extremist organizations resort to kidnapping for ransom or to such other acts only to coerce the government to do or not to do something."
The court agreed with Luthra that the petitioner had not questioned the competence of Parliament in enacting the law and said the petitioner challenged it only on the ground of harshness of the prescribed punishment.
The bench said, "The plea may indeed be in complete desperation but one can well understand such desperation among those who are waiting at the gallows for the hangman to put the noose around their neck. Dismissal of this appeal is bound to take them a step closer to the end.
"That apart, the questions (asked by the petitioner) may require an authoritative answer, by a bench of three judges, having regard to the fact that the death sentence awarded to the petitioner has been affirmed by a bench of two judges. The peculiar situation in which the case arises and the grounds on which the provisions of Section 364A are assailed persuade us to the view that this case ought to go before a larger bench of three judges for hearing and disposal."

Source : http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-07-05/india/40391126_1_death-penalty-ransom-death-sentence

Saturday, September 8, 2012

28-yr-old sentenced to death for killing parents, pregnant wife to marry lover

A man was sentenced to death on Tuesday for killing his pregnant wife and foster parents. Nitin Verma (28) killed them because he wanted to marry a neighbour. Holding that Verma was a “menace to society”, Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat said life imprisonment was “inadequate punishment” for his crime. Verma had repeatedly stabbed his handicapped father, mother and his six-month pregnant wife to death in April 2008. “There was no justification for the convict to commit the grotesque killings. The convict appears to be without any remorse,” said the judge. The court said Verma had stabbed them brutally and deserved no leniency. It also noted that the murders seemed methodical and planned, with Verma first killing his father on the ground floor of the house, then his mother on the first floor before rushing to his room to kill his wife. Public Prosecutor Aditya Chauhan had pleaded with the court to sentence Verma to death as he had murdered his aged parents and his wife in “a brutal and diabolic manner”. “Verma was in a dominating position in his family. All family members were at his mercy. This calls for harsher punishment. Verma was morally and legally bound to take care of his family, but instead murdered them in a brutal and barbaric manner,” the court said. “The convict wiped out his whole family to continue his liaison with a girl and to marry her. Nitin is awarded death sentence under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code,” it said. Verma had been adopted by his parents when he was a child. “When he did not spare his own parents and wife, what respect would he show for the lives of others? The convict is like a live bomb, which has the potential of causing a huge catastrophe if not destroyed at the earliest,” the court said. Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/28yrold-sentenced-to-death-for-killing-parents-pregnant-wife-to-marry-lover/997931/0 [accessed on 8th September 2012]

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

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