Abolish Death Penalty India: Nitish Katara murder case: Mother seeks death for convicts

Friday, February 6, 2015

Nitish Katara murder case: Mother seeks death for convicts

Jul 04, 2014 at 07:52pm IST

Press Trust of India

New Delhi: The mother of Nitish Katara, who was abducted and killed in 2002, on Friday sought death penalty for the three convicts including UP politician DP Yadav's son Vikas saying they were a "menace to the society and there was no chance of their reformation or rehabilitation". Neelam Katara's counsel, during his arguments on the sentence before a special bench of justices Gita Mittal and JR Midha, said that the convicts have also committed several offences while remaining behind the bars, which showed no remorse and repentance on their part. "From 2002 to 2013, they (convicts) committed over eleven offences, which shows no remorse and repentance. They committed these offences while remaining in custody. This shows that there is no chance of their reformation and rehabilitation.

"I am placing material which prove they are a menace to the society and that itself will establish that there is no possibility of their reformation. So, the only option is death sentence," advocate PK Dey, appearing for Neelam, told the bench. Seeking enhancement of the sentence of life term to death penalty, the counsel argued the eleven offences committed by them are not only criminal in nature but it was a direct interference with the judicial administration. Referring to Vishal, the counsel said while remaining in jail, he and other convicts have threatened the prosecution and even tried to destroy the evidence in the case, which suggests Vishal has no remorse and repentance.

Dey argued the convicts have committed the crime of honour killing which comes under the category of the "rarest of rare" and they can neither be reformed nor rehabilitated as they are habitual offenders. The arguments which remained inconclusive will continue on July 11. During the hearing, Delhi State Legal Services Authority (DLSA) OSD SS Rathi, who was asked by the high court to enquire about the convicts' capacity to pay compensation to the victims or their families, gave the report. Rathi in his report said the "total expenditure incurred on this case by the exchequer is Rs 5.86 crores". Giving details of the expenses, Rathi said that the then Special Public Prosecutor B S Joon in the case has apprised that the cost of investigation in the matter was around Rs two lakh in the year 2002.

"As such, the total approximate cost from the prosecution department side comes to Rs 46.71 lakh. Total expenditure in the Witness Protection head comes to Rs 3.89 crores till date. "Total expenditure incurred by District Judiciary as well as High Court registry is estimated to be Rs 73-74 lakh. All expenses incurred by the Jail Administration in providing boarding and lodging of accused/convicts is Rs 35.60 lakh," the report reads. It said the expenses incurred in transportation, security and manpower for the three convicts from jail to court/hospitals during trial and thereafter is Rs 39.95 lakh. In pursuance of a Supreme Court order, the Delhi High Court had said three convicts will have to pay compensation to the family of Nitish.

The apex court had in a landmark verdict in Ankush Shivaji Gaikwad Vs UOI case, said that under Section 357 of the Criminal Procedure Code, courts dealing with criminal offences are bound to consider granting compensation to the victims or their families. Vikas, Vishal and Sukhdev Pehalwan are serving life term for abducting and killing Nitish Katara, a business executive and son of an IAS officer, on the intervening night of February 16-17, 2002. They did not approve of the victim's affair with Bharti, daughter of DP Yadav. The High Court had on April 2 upheld the verdict of the lower court in the case by describing the offence as "honour killing" stemming from a "deeply entrenched belief" in caste system.

Nitish Katara was abducted and killed by Vikas, his cousin Vishal Yadav and co-convict Sukhdev Pehalwan as they did not approve of victim's affair with Bharti, daughter of DP Yadav, as they belong to different castes, the court had said. The high court had dismissed the appeals of the convicts and kept pending two separate pleas of the state and Neelam Katara seeking death penalty for them.

Source: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/nitish-katara-murder-case-mother-seeks-death-for-convicts/483753-3-244.html [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

Nitish Katara murder case: Mother seeks death for convicts

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