Abolish Death Penalty India: gangrape

Showing posts with label gangrape. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Nagaon gangrape, murder case: 19-year-old convict sentenced to death (Assam)

Written by Tora Agarwala |Nagaon |Updated: September 7, 2018 10:04:52 pm

The rape of the class 5 student created a huge uproar in Assam. After raping her turn by turn, and then setting her body on fire the youths had fled from the backdoor.

Zakir Hussain

An Assam court Friday awarded death penalty to Zakir Hussain, the prime accused in the gangrape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Assam’s Nagaon district in March. District and Session Judge Rita Kar sentenced Hussain (19) to death under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for the murder, and to life imprisonment for raping the minor girl. On March 23, as reported by The Indian Express, a minor girl was gagged, gangraped, doused in kerosene and set on fire, by her 12-year-old classmate, her 11-year-old cousin and 19-year-old neighbour, Zakir Husain.

“While Husain has been sentenced to death, the two juveniles were tried by the Juvenile Justice Board. They have now been put in a correctional home for three years,” said Shankar Raimedhi, Nagaon SP, adding that the special investigation team formed for this particular case worked in tandem with the prosecution. “That is why we have been able to bring justice in just 5 months. It is a record for the Assam Police. The brutality of the case ensured that it was put on fast track court.” The rape of the class 5 student created a huge uproar in Assam. After raping her turn by turn, and then setting her body on fire the youths had fled from the backdoor. She was rushed to Guwahati Medical College Hospital, where she succumbed to injuries later that night. Meanwhile speaking over the phone to the indianexpress.com from right outside the court, the father of the victim said, “For 5 months and 16 days we heard nothing. Today we are happy. But I do hope Husain is actually hanged.” The mother of the victim has been unwell ever since the incident. “She is still in a bad shape,” he added.

At the time of filing the chargesheet in April, apart from the three, five more people were named. The five names included Husain’s parents, his brother, his brother-in-law and the person who was driving the car in which Husain fled from the scene of crime to another village. Husain’s family is infamous in the village for a number of petty crimes over the years. “The other 5 were charged with criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence. However, they have been acquitted,” said SP Raimedhi. The family is yet to receive monetary compensation but reportedly the District Services Legal Authority is going to help them under the Victim Compensation Scheme. “All these days we didn’t get any help whatsoever. We are very poor daily wage laborers. After this judgment, we are hopeful we will get some help,” said the victim’s father.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/north-east-india/assam/nagaon-gangrape-murder-case-19-year-old-convict-sentenced-to-death-5344957/ (Accessed 25 December 2018)

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Mar 11, 2016 16:45:39 IST

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday commuted the death sentence awarded to Ramchandra Karanjule, the former director of an orphanage in Navi Mumbai, for murdering an inmate and gangraping five mentally challenged girls at the premises.

A division bench of Justices R V More and Anuja Prabhudessai partly allowed the appeal filed by Karanjule challenging the death penalty awarded to him after he was convicted by a sessions court on charges of murder and gangrape and sentenced him to 10 years rigorous imprisonment. "The applicant accused (Karanjule) is acquitted under section 302 (murder). He stands convicted under sections 376 (2)(c) and 376 (2)(g) (gang-rape) and sentenced to ten years rigorous imprisonment with fine of Rs 50,000 each," the high court said today. A total of six convicts, including Karanjule, had approached the high court after the sessions court convicted them in March 2013 on various charges in a case of murder of an inmate and gangrape of five girls, including three minors, at an orphanage run by private trust 'Kalyani Mahila Bal Seva Sanstha' at Kalamboli in Navi Mumbai.

Apart from Karanjule, the others convicted by the HC are - Nanabhau Karanjule, Khandu Kasbe, (both acquaintances of Ramchandra Karanjule), and Sonali Badade (orphanage superintendent) and Parvati Mavale (caretaker). The high court, meanwhile, acquitted Prakash Khadke (acquaintance of Ramchandra Karanjule) from all charges. The high court today upheld conviction under section 354 (molestation) and two-year sentence handed over to Nanabhau Karanjule. The HC convicted Khandu Kasbe under section 376 (2)(g) and sentenced him to ten years imprisonment along with Rs 50,000 fine.

The orphanage's superintendent, Sonali Badade, was acquitted by the HC under the charge of attempt to murder, but convicted on a lesser charge of causing hurt and sentenced to one year in jail along with Rs 2,000 fine. Similarly, Parvati Mavale was convicted by the high court for causing hurt, under section 324 of IPC, and sentenced to one year in jail with Rs 2,000 fine. "The sentences shall run concurrently. The undergone period shall be considered in the sentence," the court said. According to defence lawyers Niranjan Mundargi and Mahesh Vaswani, the lower court's order was perverse, bad in law and without application of mind. "There are errors apparent on the face of the said order and the same has caused grave miscarriage of justice to the appellant and deserves to be quashed and set aside," the appeal had said.

It further claimed that the lower court placed heavy reliance on the testimony of the complainant in the case which was not corroborated with any other evidence by the prosecution. The lower court, while awarding the maximum punishment of death to Ramchandra, had observed that he was a menace to the society and life imprisonment would be highly inadequate. The prosecution's case was that 19 girls were allegedly gangraped by three of the accused. The statements of the 19 victims were recorded by a magistrate and of them, three had come before the court to testify against the accused. The charge of murder was invoked against Karanjule after it came to light that one of the victims was suffering from jaundice and penumonia when she was gangraped. The victim subsequently died.

Source: https://www.firstpost.com/india/bombay-hc-awards-death-sentence-to-former-orphanage-head-for-raping-five-mentally-challenged-girls-2669986.html (Accessed 20 December 2018)

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Kamduni gangrape case: Kolkata court awards death sentence to 3 convicts, life term for 3 others

Jan 31, 2016 08:32:32 IST

Kolkata: A Kolkata court on Saturday sentenced three convicts to death and awarded life term to three in the infamous Kamduni gangrape case. With the arguments on the quantum of punishment not concluded on Friday, the court on Saturday continued with the hearing before deciding the sentence to the six people convicted in the brutal gangrape and murder of a college student in West Bengal's Kamduni village.The court of additional district and sessions judge Sanchita Sarkar on Thursday convicted Saiful Ali, Ansar Ali and Amin Ali of gangrape and murder. The trio got death penalty. Three other accused—Sheikh Emanul Islam, Aminur Islam and Bhola Naskar—have been convicted of gangrape, criminal conspiracy and causing disappearance of evidence and have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Amid tight security arrangements, the proceedings of the day began with the defence counsel pleading that the case did not warrant awarding death penalty. With the counsel yet to conclude their arguments, the court announced it will pronounce the sentencing on Saturday upon conclusion of the arguments. The 20-year-old girl was attacked while she was returning home from college on 7 June 2013. The second-year BA student was forcibly taken inside a factory where she was gangraped and then savagely murdered, sparking widespread outrage across the country.

Nine people were arrested and charged for the crime, with the court on Thursday acquitting Rafiqul Islam and Nur Ali while the ninth accused Gopal Naskar died while the trial was on. The residents of Kamduni led by Tumpa Koyal and Moushumi Koyal continue to press with their demand for death penalty for the convicts and also opposed the acquittal of the two accused. Led by the two Koyals and several eminent personalities from the city, many of the friends and relatives of the victim, had floated a platform 'Kamduni Pratibadi Mancha' seeking speedy justice and capital punishment to the guilty. They knocked on the doors of top political and constitutional authorities including the president, demanding the trial be expedited.

Source: https://www.firstpost.com/india/kamduni-gangrape-case-kolkata-court-awards-death-sentence-to-3-convicts-life-term-for-3-others-2605000.html (Accessed on 20 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