​Mahatma’s sons opposed death penalty for Godse, Apte. I belong to that school of thought: Gopal Gandhi

NEW DELHI, JULY 18

Thanking 18 Opposition parties for backing his candidature as Vice-President, former West Bengal Governor Gop​a​l Krishna Gandhi, on Tuesday said he was an ‘ordinary citizen’ who aspired to narrow the growing gulf between people and politics in India today.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi

“I am not here to oppose any individual, much less the senior gentleman nominated by the NDA (M. Venkaiah Naidu). I am not here to oppose any political party or formation. I am here to place before all honourable MPs, the aspirations of the common citizens of India. ​There ​is absence of a sense ​among citizens ​that this politics is mine. I am not talking about government, but politics. People’s faith in politics itself has diminished, almost collapsed, and this I want to tell all political parties, including those who have supported me.. I would like to see a revival of ​that ​faith,” Gandhi told presspersons after filing his nomination.

Asked about the Shiv Sena’s allegation that he “supported terrorism”, as he sought mercy for Bombay blast accused Yakub Memon, Gandhi said he was principally opposed to capital punishment and death penalty. “Mahatma Gandhi opposed death penalty. He fell to assassin​s'​ bullets, but his two sons appealed to the government of the day, saying that Nathuram Godse should not be hanged, Naray​a​n Apte should not be hanged, because Gandhiji was opposed to death sentence..I belong to that school of thought,” he said, adding that he was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar, both of whom opposed death penalty.

“Death penalty is a death penalty, I have also written to Pakistan President for Kulbhushanji (Jadhav),” he said, adding that he believes that “death penalty and capital punishment belong to the medieval ages.” Gandhi​ welcomed support from the Biju Janata Dal ​ supremo Naveen Patnaik ​on Tuesday, ​but added that even if he won this​ election it wouldn’t be a great feat. “Winning positions or losing is not importan​​t today. What is more important is being true to your words, thoughts and your heart,” he added.​

Source: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/mahatmas-sons-opposed-death-penalty-for-godse-apte-i-belong-to-that-school-of-thought-gopal-gandhi/article9774957.ece (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Death Penalty Belongs To Medieval Age: Gopalkrishna Gandhi

All India | Press Trust of India | Updated: July 18, 2017 16:56 IST

The opposition's vice presidential candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi said he drew inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar on the issue of death penalty.

NEW DELHI: The United Progressive Alliance's vice presidential candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who opposed the hanging of the 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon, today said capital punishment belongs to the medieval age. Mr Gandhi, who is facing criticism from the National Democratic Alliance for backing the terrorist's mercy plea, said he drew inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar, who wanted to abolish the death penalty. "In our country, we are living in times of division. A whole force which is dividing our country is in action mode and that spells danger," Mr Gandhi said.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Mr Gandhi filed his nomination today for the vice presidential election in the presence of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi. Others leaders who were present include Janata Dal United's Sharad Yadav, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury, Communist Party of India's D Raja, Nationalist Congress Party's Tariq Anwar and Praful Patel, National Conference's Farooq Abdullah and DMK's Kanimozhi. The opposition's vice presidential candidate said he represents the people of the country and not any political party. "People's faith in politics itself has diminished and has collapsed. I would like to see a revival of that faith," he said after filing his papers.

The Shiv Sena, BJP's ally in Maharashtra, had criticised him for petitioning the President to save Memon. "Shiv Sena is doing its duty with dedication. What Shiv Sena has said, it had to. I feel that the death penalty and capital punishment belong to the medieval ages. Death penalty is wrong and this is my principle," Mr Gandhi said. He said he has written a similar petition for Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav, who is facing death sentence in Pakistan. "As a common, independent citizen, it is my duty to fulfil my principles. I believe in that. I have drawn inspiration on death penalty from two persons - Mahatma Gandhi, who opposed it, and Babasaheb Ambedkar, who said it is only proper to abolish it," Mr Gandhi said.

The former West Bengal governor and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari has been picked by 18 opposition parties. The vice presidential election is on August 5. Mr Gandhi will contest against the National Democratic Alliance's candidate M Venkaiah Naidu.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/death-penalty-belongs-to-medieval-age-gopalkrishna-gandhi-1726284 (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Gopal Gandhi justifies effort to save Yakub Memon, says death penalty is wrong

By Express Web Desk |New Delhi |Updated: July 18, 2017 3:55:32 pm

Gopalkrishna Gandhi justified his efforts to save Yakub Memon, a convict in the Mumbai blast case from the gallows and said that the practice of capital punishment was medieval and wrong.

Gopalkrishnan Gandhi

Opposition vice presidential candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi justified his efforts to save Yakub Memon, a convict in the Mumbai blast case from the gallows. He said that the practice of capital punishment was medieval and wrong. Gandhi faced criticism from the ruling party but said that he takes Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar as his inspiration and they were against death penalty and wanted to abolish it. In the presence of former prime minister Manmohan Singh and top Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul, Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Tuesday, filed his nomination papers. JD (U)’s Sharad Yadav, CPI(M)’s Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s D Raja, NCP’s Tariq Anwar and Praful Patel, NC’s Farooq Abdullah and DMK’s Kanimozhi were also present.

After filing his nomination papers, Gandhi said, “In our country, we are living in times of division. A whole force which is dividing our country is in action mode and that spells danger.” He said that he supports common people of the country and not any political party and that he would try to bridge the gulf between the public and politics. “People’s faith in politics itself has diminished and has collapsed. I would like to see a revival of that faith,” he said. Responding to the Shiv Sena’s attack on him for petitioning the president to save Memon, Gandhi said, “Shiv Sena is doing its duty with dedication. What Shiv Sena has said, it had to. I feel that the death penalty and capital punishment belong to the medieval ages. Death penalty is wrong and this is my principle.” He also spoke about Kulbhushan Jadhav, who is facing death sentence in Pakistan and said, “As a common, independent citizen, it is my duty to fulfil my principles. I believe in that. I have drawn inspiration on death penalty from two persons – Mahatma Gandhi who was opposed it and Babasaheb Ambedkar, who said it is only proper abolish it”.

The vice presidential election is scheduled to be held on August 5. Gandhi will contest against the NDA’s candidate M Venkaiah Naidu.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/gopal-gandhi-justifies-effort-to-save-yakub-memon-says-death-penalty-is-wrong-4756231/ (Accessed 23 December 2018)

President Rejects Mercy Petitions Of Five Death-Row Convicts In Two Days (Madhya Pradesh)

BY: LIVE LAW RESEARCH TEAM JUNE 18, 2017 10:31 PM

President Pranab Mukherjee rejected mercy petitions from five death-row convicts, on May 25 and 26. These are perhaps his last disposal of mercy petitions, before his term expires on July 24. 

Pranab Mukharjee, Indian President (2012–2017)

With these, he has rejected mercy petitions of 41 death-row convicts, whereas he has commuted the death sentences of only seven, to life imprisonment. On May 25, he rejected the mercy petitions of Jitendra @ Jeetu, Babu @ Ketan, and Sanni @ Devendra. The Supreme Court dismissed their appeals against their death sentences, confirmed earlier by the High Court of Madhya Pradesh (Indore Bench), on January 6, 2015 in limine, through an order pronounced by the bench of the then Chief Justice H.L. Dattu, and Justices A.K.Sikri and R.K.Agrawal. The order just carried three words: “Delay condoned. Dismissed”. The Supreme Court, while hearing the landmark Shatrughan Chauhan case, had decried the practice of in limine dismissals by the Supreme Court of appeals by death-row convicts. 

According to the Death Penalty India Report Volume 1 published by the National Law University, Delhi, last year, there have been nine in limine dismissals of SLPs filed by the death-row convicts in the Supreme Court since 2004. The bench, which dismissed Jitendra, Babu and Sanni’s SLPs in January 2015 also dismissed in limine, another SLP filed by Babasaheb Maruti Kamble, in the same month. In limine dismissals, because they lack reasoning, are legally indefensible, and the death-row convicts have a fair chance of getting their appeals reheard by the Supreme Court on this ground. Interestingly, the review petition filed by Jitendra @ Jeetu and other convicts, is yet to be heard by a three-Judge bench in open court as mandated by the Supreme Court’s Constitution bench in Mohd. Arif case.

It was last listed before Justice Kurian Joseph in Chambers on October 5, 2015, when he directed that the applicants in the case shall also be heard when the Review Petition is heard in the open Court. In their Judgment, Justices S.K.Seth and P.K.Jaiswal of the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, (authored by Justice Seth), had held that the accused, by their extremely depraved and demonic acts against an infant of three or four years, hae forfeited the right to be treated softly or lightly. “So long as the death sentence remains on the statute book, it would, in our opinion, be a travesty of justice to award the lesser sentence of life to the accused”, the bench had observed. 

According to the High Court, the prosecution has made out two very important circumstances against the accused. They are the DNA report and the seizure of documents from the spot per seizure Memo. “These two circumstances by themselves in our opinion, build a chain of circumstances leading to the one and only conclusion of the involvement of all the three accused persons before us”, the bench had held. Last rejection The President rejected the mercy pleas of Purushottam Dashrath Borate and Pradeep Yeshwant Kokade, on May 26. Their appeals against the death sentences were dismissed by the Supreme Court’s three-judge bench on May 8, 2015. The judgment was authored by the then Chief Justice, Dattu, on behalf of himself and justices S.A.Bobde and Arun Mishra. The two accused in this case were found guilty of sexually abusing and killing a BPO employee, on her way to work in Pune, in 2007.

The accused were part of a private cab service, hired by the deceased’s employer to pick up employees from their homes, and drop them, after their work shifts were over. The Supreme Court confined the hearing of their appeals to only the issue of sentence. The bench observed that in a case where the accused does not act on provocation or on the spur of the moment, but meticulously executes a deliberate, cold-blooded and pre-planned crime, giving scant regard to the consequences of the same, the precarious balance in the sentencing policy evolved by our criminal jurisprudence would tilt heavily towards the death sentence. The incident, the bench held, shocked and repulsed the collective conscience of the community and the court. As a result, the bench found no mitigating factor in favour of commutation of their death sentences to life imprisonment. 

Whatever the findings of the Courts, the President is expected to apply his mind independently while exercising his powers under Article 72 of the Constitution. Eminent scholar and statesman, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, observed in his book, Abolishing the Death Penalty, (Aleph, 2016) as follows: “The president is bound by the Government’s advice, but the subject –the life and death of an Indian citizen –makes it possible for the President, and I would say incumbent on the President to go into each such case with a magnifying glass. And this not just to spot loopholes of fact, but also to see the crime against the light of circumstances, and contexts that lie beyond purely legal facts and legal interpretations” (pages 47- 48).

Gopalkrishna Gandh, further observed: “Presidential inclinations cannot form the final gradient to the gallows. A mercy petition cannot be at the mercy of one man’s temperament, albeit filtered by governmental advice. That is valuationally abhorrent in a democratic republic governed by the rule of law.” He continues: “In the provisions of Article 72 lie a certain philosophy, inadequately explained, that requires the executive study of a mercy petition to be trans-judicial, but not un-judicious, to be a large canvas but not a tabula rasa for presidential expressionism. No man’s life can be left to the mercy of another man’s discretion. Raisina Hill is not the Purana Qila, nor Rashtrapati Bhavan the Red Fort.” These are indeed strong words.

Source: https://www.livelaw.in/president-rejects-mercy-petitions-five-death-row-convicts-two-days/ (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s New Book Assails President Mukherjee’s `Robotic’ Use Of His Powers To Reject Mercy Petitions

BY: LIVE LAW RESEARCH TEAM 

DECEMBER 26, 2016 

10:43 AM

The President, Pranab Mukherjee, has so far, under Article 72 of the Constitution, rejected mercy petitions from 36 death row convicts, commuted the death sentences of three of the 36 convicts whose mercy petitions were rejected by him, three have been hanged, 17 have been successful in getting the Supreme Court or the high court commute their death sentences by setting aside the rejection of the mercy petitions, while the remaining 16 are oscillating between life and death, as they have not exhausted the legal remedies available to them. As he completes his term as the President in July next year, he may like to reflect on the legacy which he leaves for his successors. There is no doubt that the President, under the Constitution, is bound by the ministerial advice tendered to him, on whether to accept or reject a mercy petition from a death row convict. Does this make the president a mere rubber stamp?, asks Gopalkrishna Gandhi, author of the recent book, Abolishing the Death Penalty: Why India Should Say No To Capital Punishment (Aleph, 2016), and answers thus: “Rubber stamps do not necessarily come with rubber handholds. They can be made of firm wood and, sometimes, even steel. And they can choose to use their own, not the ‘state issued’, inking pad of unvarying magenta.” 

Book: Abolishing the Death Penalty by Gopalkrishna Gandhi

The author adds that a president can accept without demur the government’s advice on whether a mercy petition of a death row convict should be rejected. Or, the president can if he so wishes to, ask questions, make comments, and seek clarifications before he confirms advice, it is perfectly possible that he can occasion some rethinking in the government and actually change the course of the case.” Some presidents, Gopalkrishna Gandhi says, have not troubled the government with second thoughts, others have; To give evaluations and revaluations a chance to excavate the ingredients of a death penalty case is not an act of procrastination but of responsibility. It is both wise and humble. To not do so is unwise and arrogant. It is also callous, he suggests. Gopalkrishna Gandhi considers Mukherjee as a retentionist, while categorising former presidents, K.R.Narayanan, A.P.J.Abdul Kalam and Pratibha Patil, as abolitionists. He observes, “Presidential inclinations cannot form the final gradient to the gallows. A mercy petition cannot be at the mercy of one man’s temperament, albeit filtered by governmental advice. That is valuationally abhorrent in a democratic republic governed by the rule of law.” 

In the provisions of Article 72, the author says, lie a philosophy inadequately explained, that requires the executive study of a mercy petition to be trans-judicial but not un-judicious, to be a large canvas but not a tabula rasa for presidential expressionism. No man’s life can be left to the mercy of another man’s discretion, he is categorical. “Raisina Hill is not the Purana Qila, nor Rashtrapati Bhavan the Red Fort”, he says succinctly. The book is a lucid analysis of the arguments for and against death penalty, and is likely to convert a retentionist into an abolitionist. Is the abolition of death penalty possible in India? More often, leaders and institutions move along the grain of prevailing public opinion. Those in India are no different from this global phenomenon. But is it a sign of being democratic? To Gopalkrishna Gandhi, it is a sign of moral unventuresomeness and intellectual feebleness. Francois Mitterrand of France and Nelson Mandela of South Africa, greatly assisted by two non-political judicial intellects, Robert Badinter and Justice Arthur Badinter was a French criminal lawyer, university professor, politician and activist against death penalty, whose abolition he successfully sponsored in Parliament in 1981. Mitterrand chose him as his Minister of Justice, after coming to power. Arthur Chaskalson was President of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1994 to 2001, and Chief Justice of South Africa from 2001 to 2005. The court’s first major decision under his leadership, was the abolition of the death penalty on June 6, 1995. 

To abolish death penalty, India has to wait for its Badinter and Chaskalson moments. Those advocating abolition of death penalty are invariably asked the question about the victims, and their families, and their cry for justice, which is answered in the form of death sentence for the killers. The book’s response to this is that death penalty deprives the convict, the experience of the consequences of his crime, which is the objective of any punishment. By snatching the life of the convict at one go, the state may achieve closure to the case, but the objectives of the punishment are not fulfilled, and justice remains incomplete. The author also seeks answers to the difficult question of whether life sentence without remission can be a substitute to death sentence, as the Supreme Court has held in several recent cases. He merely observes that the right to life is about more than freedom from the noose. It is, he says, about the right conditions for prisoners’ officially incapacitated livingconditions that are compatible with human dignity. Left to himself, would a prisoner prefer death sentence, or life imprisonment without remission? Poor and inhuman conditions prevailing in India’s prisons would suggest that a prisoner may prefer death to life imprisonment without remission. But the answer is not as simple as that. open, rather than pre-determined by the Court, which has no idea of the prisoner’s capacity for reform, at the time of sentencing. Therefore, the current phase of life imprisonment without remission cannot be considered a victory for the abolition movement. A murder, committed on impulse, without premeditation, as we all know, does not merit a death sentence. 

Death penalty, insofar as it is imposed after premeditation by the State on a convict, therefore, is nothing but a State-sponsored murder, which ought not to remain in the statute books. The author, a well-known diplomat and author, is currently a Distinguished Professor at Ashoka University. According to Roger Hood, Professor Emeritus of Criminology, University of Oxford, co-author of The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective, the book makes a convincing case for complete abolition of the death penalty in India. Fali S. Nariman, senior advocate, observes that punishment with death is not at all necessary to convince people that killing people is a crime! This is the message eloquently conveyed in this unputdownable book, he adds. The book’s cover has a persuasive question posed at the centre of the noose: Is taking another life a just punishment or an act as inhuman as the crime that triggered it? Any reader who reads this book is likely to say no to the first question, and yes to the second. 

This article has been made possible because of financial support from Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation.

Source: https://www.livelaw.in/gopalkrishna-gandhis-new-book-assails-president-mukherjees-robotic-use-powers-reject-mercy-petitions/ (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Lynchings Show Mindset Comfortable With Death Penalty: Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Press Trust Of India

Updated:December 4, 2016, 12:27 PM IST

Acts like lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq show a mindset that is entirely comfortable with the death penalty, wholly exculpatory of torture as a means of extorting confessions, says Gopalkrishna Gandhi who is a known campaigner against capital punishment.

Acts like lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq show a mindset that is entirely comfortable with the death penalty, wholly exculpatory of torture as a means of extorting confessions, says Gopalkrishna Gandhi who is a known campaigner against capital punishment. Gandhi has come out with a new book Abolishing The Death Penalty: Why India Should Say No To Capital Punishment, published by Aleph Book Company, in which through in-depth analysis and marshalling of considered opinion of jurists, human rights activists, scholars and criminologists among others, he argues why the death penalty should be abolished with immediate effect in India.

According to Gandhi, death penalty asks to be questioned on grounds of the right to life, the right to self-defence against battery, assault, homicide and murder. "States that keep the death penalty alive and do not realise the absurdity of that oxymoron may not be accused of a sadistic pleasure in dealing death. But they cannot be exempted from the accusation of deriving a sense of pleasure in the death penalty as a power, a perquisite, a prerogative that no one else enjoys," he writes. The former West Bengal governor says the power to commute a death sentence to one of life imprisonment is part of the power of the death penalty.

File photo of former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi (Getty Images)

"And even in the exercise of that pardoning prerogative, the state is using its exceptional privilege, its unique power. It is the exclusivity of this power, in its extreme nature, and indeed in its exceptionality that it is tantamount to a reserved 'pleasure'. And it is in that privileged uniqueness that it is so outrageously capricious and so flagrantly promiscuous," he argues. Gandhi, currently distinguished professor of history and politics at Ashoka University, says public opinion in India has always been "death-penalty minded" and is now even more so. "It is in fact more retribution-minded, vengeance-minded and geared to dealing death," he says. He then cites the lynching of a prisoner detained on suspicion of rape in Dimapur in Nagaland last year which included him being dragged out of jail, stripped, paraded naked and then beaten to death, in mob adjudication.

"The mob-lynching and murder of Mohammad Akhlaq in a village in Uttar Pradesh on September 28, 2015 on the rumour that he had killed a cow and eaten its meat, is another grim instance of mob fury that stops at nothing less than killing. These acts show a mindset that is entirely comfortable with the death penalty, wholly exculpatory of torture as a means of extorting confessions," Gandhi writes. Abolishing the death penalty, he says, is not about the final punishment from which there is no return but about the first principle of penology which is about return, a return to civility. "The debate about the death penalty lies beyond 'to hang or not to hang' to a discussion on the criminal investigation system, on the law's transparency, the state's impartiality, a civilised penology," he says. "We do not choose to be born. But once arrived, we do choose, through programmed genomes, instinct and will, to stay alive. In fact, we do more than choose. We resist anything that comes in the way of our staying alive. That resistance is built into the apparatus of staying alive," he says.

In the book, Gandhi asks fundamental questions about the ultimate legal punishment awarded to those accused of major crimes. Is taking another life a just punishment or an act as inhuman as the crime that triggered it? Does having capital punishment in the law books deter crime? His conclusions are unequivocal: Cruel in its operation, ineffectual as deterrence, unequal in its application in an uneven society, liable like any punishment to be in error but incorrigibly so, these grievous flaws that are intrinsic to the death penalty are compounded by yet another - it leaves the need for retribution (cited as its primary 'good') unrequited and simply makes society more bloodthirsty.

Source: https://www.news18.com/news/india/lynchings-show-mindset-comfortable-with-death-penalty-gopalkrishna-gandhi-1319076.html (Accessed 22 December 2018)