Abolish Death Penalty India: President Mukherjee rejects 97% of mercy pleas as India gives two death sentences each day

Friday, February 6, 2015

President Mukherjee rejects 97% of mercy pleas as India gives two death sentences each day

ACHR PRESS RELEASE ACHR INDEX: PR/IND/08/2014 Date: 01 September 2014 New Delhi: Asian Centre for Human Rights in its report, “India: Death Penalty Has No Deterrence”, stated that President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected 97% of the mercy petitions since assuming the office of the President of India on 25 July 2012 despite no deterrent effect of death penalty. President Mukherjee has considered 23 mercy pleas involving 31 death-row convicts out of which only one convict, Atbir was granted mercy as on August 2014. Analysing the data of the National Crimes Records Bureau (NCRB), Asian Centre for Human Rights stated, “From 2001 to 2012, death sentence of 1,552 convicts were confirmed while the death sentences for 4,382 convicts were commuted to life imprisonment. This implies that a total of 5,934 convicts were given death sentence in the last 12 years in India i.e. about two convicts being given death sentence every working day of the judiciary”. “The empirical evidence of the Government of India, however, establishes that death penalty does not act as deterrent.” - stated Mr Suhas Chakma, Director of Asian Centre for Human Rights. Death penalty is awarded mostly in cases of murder. Despite executions of an average of 128 death row convicts per year from 1953 to 1963 as per the 35th Report of the Law Commission, the decadal increase of murder cases during the same period as per the NCRB was about 17%. Obviously, executions had not acted as a deterrent. Rather, drastic reduction in executions in the post Bachan Singh judgement period drastically brought down murder cases. As per the NCRB which started collecting statistics on death penalty from 1995, the decadal decrease of murder cases during 1992 to 2002 was 12.43% in actual term despite decadal growth rate of India’s population by 21.34% from 846.3 million in 1991 to 1.028 billion in 2001. Similarly, the decadal decrease of murder cases during 2002-2012 was 1.99% in actual term despite increase of India’s population from 1.028 billion in 2001 to 1.21 billion in 2011. Though no convict under anti-terror laws from Jammu and Kashmir has been executed from 1990 till the hanging of Afzal Guru in 2013, Jammu and Kashmir had recorded decadal reduction of 70% incidents of terrorist violence and 61.66% reduction in killings during the period 2003-2012 as against the period 1993-2002. Terror incidents declined from 5,247 incidents in 1993 to 220 incidents in 2012. The number of persons killed also declined from 2,255 persons in 1993 to 102 persons in 2012. Further, decadal terror incidents of about 43,085 incidents with 26,285 deaths in Jammu and Kashmir during 1993 to 2002 were reduced to 12,970 incidents with 10,076 deaths during 2003-2012. Even inclusion of death penalty for repeat offenders of rape under Section 376E of the Indian Penal Code following the Nirbhaya gang rape incident in Delhi has not reduced non-homicidal offences such as rape. On 4 April 2014, a Sessions Court in Mumbai, Maharashtra became the first in the country to impose death penalty to three repeat offenders of rape under the new Section 376E of the IPC in the infamous Shakti Mill rape case. However, the statistics provided by Mumbai Police showed that 135 rape cases were reported from April to 15 June 2014 i.e. about 2 rape cases daily. Similarly, the award of death penalty to four adult accused found guilty of rape and murder of Nirbhaya by a fast track court in September 2013 failed to act as a deterrent. According to data released by the Delhi Police, 616 rape cases were registered in Delhi from 1 January 2014 to 30 April 2014 i.e. six cases were reported every day. This is an increase of 36% compared to around 450 cases registered in the same period in 2013. With the exception of the Central Reserve Police Force Act, death penalty is provided in all the legislations establishing the Army, Air Force, Navy and the central para-military forces for a number of military offences such as in relation to the enemy or terrorist, mutiny, desertion and aiding desertion and other offences such as murder including fratricide. The Ministry of Defence stated that 83 cases of fratricide were reported from the armed forces from 2000 to 2012. Though the CRPF Act does not provide death penalty, maximum number of fratricide killings among the para-military forces of 18 incidents, were reported from the CPRF. “Though death penalty does not act as a deterrent, the Government of India continues to mislead the people about its effectiveness. Death penalty can never be a substitute to prevention, effective and prompt investigation and speedy justice delivery system against crimes on which the Government of India has failed”. – further stated Mr Chakma. Asian Centre for Human Rights called upon the Government of India to amend all the laws that provide death penalty and replace the same with punishment for life imprisonment i.e. imprisonment for the whole of the remaining period of the convicted person’s natural life. Source: http://www.achrweb.org/press/2014/IND08-2014.html [last accessed 06.02.2015]

No comments:

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

President Mukherjee rejects 97% of mercy pleas as India gives two death sentences each day

No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers