Abolish Death Penalty India: SC commutes man's death penalty to life term in murder case (Madhya Pradesh)

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

SC commutes man's death penalty to life term in murder case (Madhya Pradesh)

24 FEBRUARY 2019 Last Updated at 7:27 PM | SOURCE: PTI

New Delhi, Feb 24 The Supreme Court has commuted to life term the death sentence awarded to a man for killing his wife and five children on the ground of "unexplained delay" of four years by the Madhya Pradesh government in forwarding the mercy petition of the convict to the Union Home Ministry. The apex court said there was a delay of almost five years in deciding the mercy petition as the state authorities kept sitting on it and did not forwarded it to the home ministry for four years. Observing that a mercy petition is the "last hope" of a person on death row, a bench headed by Justice N V Ramana said that convict Jagdish had filed a mercy petition before the jail authorities on October 13, 2009, but his plea was forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs on October 15, 2013.

"The mercy petition is the last hope of a person on death row. Every dawn will give rise to a new hope that his mercy petition may be accepted. By night fall this hope also dies," the bench, also comprising Justices Deepak Gupta and Indira Banerjee, said. "Keeping in view all the circumstances of the case, including the un-explained delay of four years in forwarding the mercy petition by the state of Madhya Pradesh leading to delay of almost five years in deciding the mercy petition and the fact that the petitioner has been incarcerated for almost 14 years, we are of view that regardless of the brutal nature of crime this is not a fit case where death sentence should be executed and we, accordingly commute the death sentence to that of life," the court said.

However, the bench directed that life imprisonment in the case would mean that convict will not be released from jail till his natural death. Jagdish had killed his wife and five children in August 2005 and the trial court had awarded him death penalty in April 2006. In June 2006, the Madhya Pradesh High Court had confirmed the death sentence awarded to him and later in September 2009 the apex court had dismissed his appeal. Thereafter, he had filed a mercy petition addressed to the President of India and the governor of Madhya Pradesh through the jail authorities on October 13, 2009.

His mercy petition was rejected by the President on July 16, 2014. Jagdish had then moved the apex court challenging the rejection of his mercy petition on the ground that there was a delay of almost five years in deciding the mercy petition and his death sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment. In its verdict, the apex court said that Madhya Pradesh government has given no explanation for the delay of over four years in forwarding the mercy petition to the home ministry.

"As far as the Government of India or the Secretariat of the President of India is concerned, there is no delay in dealing with the mercy petition and the same has been dealt with expeditiously," the bench said. "The delay in forwarding the (mercy) petition is totally un-explained and this court cannot countenance an un-explained delay of more than four years. We are dealing here with the case of a person who has been sentenced to death," it said. ABA MNL AQS AQS

Source: https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/sc-commutes-mans-death-penalty-to-life-term-in-murder-case/1484971 (accessed on 29 May 2019)

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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

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

SC commutes man's death penalty to life term in murder case (Madhya Pradesh)

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