Abolish Death Penalty India: High Court stays execution of Surinder Koli's death sentence

Friday, February 6, 2015

High Court stays execution of Surinder Koli's death sentence

Friday, 31 October 2014 - 8:50pm IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: PTI

The Allahabad High Court today stayed the execution of the death sentence of Surinder Koli in the gruesome Nithari serial killings case. A division bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice P KS Baghel passed the order on a Public Interest Litigation filed by NGO People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) and fixed November 25 as the next date of hearing in the matter.

The court also asked the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government to file their counter affidavits by the next date of hearing. The High Court order comes two days after the Supreme Court rejected Koli's plea to recall the death sentence which was awarded to him by a special CBI court in February, 2009. In the PIL, PUDR has contended that Koli deserved "mercy on humanitarian ground" since he has suffered "mental torment" during the more than five-year-long period for which he has languished his jail awaiting verdicts on his numerous appeals and mercy petitions.

Koli, who worked as a domestic servant at the house of Noida-based businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, is facing the gallows for the murder of a 14-year-old girl Rimpa Haldar. Both Koli and Pandher had been awarded death sentence in the Rimpa Haldar case though the latter was acquitted later by the Allahabad High Court. Pandher, who had been held guilty by the trial court along with Koli in a number of other related cases also, was recently released on bail.

The killings came to light in December, 2006 when several residents of the Nithari village, located close to Pandher's bungalow in Sector 31 of Noida, approached the police with complaints of their children, mostly minor girls, having gone missing. During investigations, a number of skeletons were exhumed from near the house. Following an outcry over alleged inept handling of the case by Uttar Pradesh police, the case was handed over to the CBI in January, 2007.

After his death sentence in the Rimpa Haldar case was upheld by the Allahabad High Court vide the very order whereby Pandher was acquitted, Koli's subsequent appeal before the Supreme Court was turned down while his mercy petition was rejected by the President. The trial court, thereafter, issued a death warrant on September 02 this year fixing September 12 as the date of hanging but the execution was stayed by the Supreme Court which decided to hear his recall petition in an open court. However, on October 28, the Supreme Court dismissed the recall application, clearing the decks for execution of the death warrant.

Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-high-court-stays-execution-of-surinder-koli-s-death-sentence-2031015 [last accessed 06.02.2015]

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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

Friday, February 6, 2015

High Court stays execution of Surinder Koli's death sentence

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