Tharoor moves private bill to abolish death penalty (All India)

Shemin Joy, New Delhi, AUG 11 2018, 10:55AM IST 

Calling it an "aberration in a healthy democracy" and a "dated form of retributive justice" untenable with India's non-violent traditions, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has moved a private members' bill seeking abolishment of death penalty. 

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor

The Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha recently by the Congress MP from Kerala and it joins a series such private members' bills and resolutions moved in Parliament by MPs like CPI's D Raja and DMK's Kanimozhi. None of the earlier attempts was fructified as the government stood adamantly against removing the death penalty from the statutes as most parties, except the Le, support execution as a form of punishment. In his Bill, Tharoor wants to amend the Indian Penal Code to ensure that "no person convicted of any oence shall be punishable with the sentence of death" and wherever it is applicable, it should be replaced with life imprisonment. 

Tharoor argues that the death penalty is "untenable with our historic traditions of non-violence and has no place" in 21st century India. The death penalty is a "distraction" from the needed strengthening of preventive and reformative models of our judicial systems, he says. The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill says, "death penalty remains an aberration in a healthy democracy and has in eect failed to fulfil the purpose it was designed to. Instead, it has reduced the State, the moral safeguard and gatekeeper of justice for the common citizen to a make the world blind." Tharoor is of the view that the death penalty is "untenable" to the concept of a "just and reasonable legal procedure, as the ends of justice in deterring criminal activity, is not served by the death penalty, more than the punishment of life imprisonment". 

The penological justifications for the death penalty are "no longer valid", in light of the evolving jurisprudence and criminology, "in favour of restorative justice, rather than justice motivated by retribution", the Bill says. Though the sentencing of death is measured through the doctrine of 'the rarest of rare', the Bill says the very nature of this doctrine lends itself to "human bias". It stands in "stark contradiction" with the previous tenet of a judgment beyond the scope of reasonable doubt. The Supreme Court and the Law Commission, which studied the death penalty acknowledged this. The Law Commission, in its report on the death penalty that recommended its abolition except in terrorism cases, had concluded that the exercise of mercy powers under articles 72 and 161 of the Constitution, have failed to act as a "bulwark against the miscarriage of justice in the imposition of the death penalty". "The fact that lower courts award a significant number of death sentences, of which, only a fraction of these is confirmed by the Supreme Court, lends credence to the belief that the 'rarest of rare' doctrine has not been applied in spirit by lower courts," the Bill says. 

It also highlighted that the "significant percentage" of individuals who have been given this sentence hail from socio-economically vulnerable groups and emphasised that it illustrated the "larger implications of such bias". "Further, the utility of capital punishment as a 'deterrent' to crime and terror stands effectively diminished given that comprehensive studies have statistically denied any correlation between the rate of crime and death penalty. The existence of such a punishment also renders implausible any scope for reformation of a convict," the Bill says, an argument which has been highlighted in the Law Commission report too. 

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/national/death-penalty-abberation-686913.html (Accessed 25 December 2018)

72 Muslims Hanged in India against 1,342 Hindus and Others

Published: 26th July 2015 07:14 AM | Last Updated: 26th July 2015 08:01 AM

By Express News Service

As high-decibel protests against the death sentence awarded to Yakub Memon acquire communal overtones, a new study shows that of the 1,414 convicts hanged in post-1947 India, Muslims count for around 5 per cent 

Supreme Court rejects Yakub Memon’s appeal to suspend his execution for his role in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, he will take his last walk at 7 am on July 30—to the gallows at Nagpur Central Jail. The bombings were meant to avenge the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which India’s liberal and secular establishment still condemn as an attack on the minorities. However, a new report by Death Penalty Research Project of the National Law University (NLU), Delhi shows that of the 1,414 prisoners in the available list of convicts hanged in post-Independence India, only 72 are Muslims—not even 5 per cent of the total executions. The report, however, clarifies its list is not meant to be a reference for the total number of prisoners hanged in India since 1947.

■ Of the 27 prisoners hanged in Andhra Pradesh till 1968, only two were Muslims.

■ Of the 25 hanged in Delhi, only four were Muslims.

■ Of the 103 hanged in Haryana, there was only one Muslim.

■ Of the 39 hanged in Karnataka, only three were Muslims.

■ Of the 78 convicts hanged in Madhya Pradesh, only five were Muslims.

■ Of the 56 hanged in Maharashtra, there were only five Muslims.

■ Of the 366 prisoners who went to the gallows in UP, only 45 were Muslims.

■ Of the 32 convicts who were hanged in West Bengal, only seven were Muslims.

The death list in some states is tainted with gallows humour: in Kerala, no records are available because the authorities confessed termites ate them all. The story is similar in Andhra Pradesh, where termites have made a meal of all records pertaining to executions after 1968. The report was compiled by NLU researchers from the responses received from India’s Central jails. Certain prisons provided information for only a certain period of time, or like Tamil Nadu, refused to give any data. According the report, in Jammu and Kashmir, the playground of Islamist terror, not one Muslim has been hanged. Official statistics of terrorist killings in J&K are available only up to 2009, which note that over 47,000 people have died in terror-related violence. The up-to-date numbers would be higher. The Human Rights Watch has noted that thousands of Kashmiri Hindus have been killed over the past 10 years by terrorists and Muslim mobs. Additionally, in Haryana, Odisha, Rajasthan and Punjab, not a single Muslim convict has gone to the gallows. In India’s capital, Delhi, Muslims comprise 11.7 per cent of the population, making it the second largest community after Hindus. Here for every Muslim, five members of other communities climbed the scaffold. Executions are carried out in Jail No. 3, Tihar Jail.

Sections of the media and politicians such as Asaduddin Owaisi, leader of the Andhra Pradesh communal outfit, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, and Abu Azmi, Samajwadi Party leader from Maharashtra, are protesting the death sentence. Owaisi accused the government of hanging Memon only because he is a Muslim and questioned why the death sentences of those convicted in Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination case were commuted to life imprisonment. He had wanted Bangladeshi anti-fundamentalist author Tasleema Nasreen to be beheaded and had called MLAs kafirs and Hindus impotent. He was jailed for making hate speeches, but no harm came to him. In united Andhra Pradesh, his state, 27 convicts were hanged of which only two—Jonada Muslalaiah and Sk. Babu Sahib—were Muslims.

Azmi had accused the government “of making moves against Muslims”. He claimed that according to the chargesheet, Memon was innocent. “He did run away with his brother but he has not committed any huge crime,” said the Maharashtra legislator. In his own state—where there were 63 terror-related incidents this year alone, (around nine a month) and 139 in 2014 (around 12 a month)—56 were hanged for various offences. Of these, only four Muslim convicts—Abdul Rehman Imrankhan, Abhasjhan Wazirkhan, Munwvar Haun Shah, and Ajmal Amir Kasab—climbed the scaffold, just 7.14 per cent. This amounts to 13 criminals of other faiths for every Muslim. Kasab was a Pakistani terrorist and part of an ISI-trained team, which killed 166 innocent people and wounded 293 in the bloody invasion of Mumbai in November 2008.

The ultimate irony happened on Friday when Naxalites in Nagpur jail, whose singular manifesto is bloody revolution to cleanse society of class enemies, went on a hunger strike protesting the death sentence awarded to Memon. Naxal attacks have claimed around 13,000 lives so far. In MP, the death rate is 6.41 per cent of Muslims hanged against those belonging to other communities. Executions were carried out in Jabalpur and Raipur central jails, but the latter has been shifted to Chhattisgarh after the division of the state.

Source: http://www.newindianexpress.com/thesundaystandard/2015/jul/26/72-Muslims-Hanged-in-India-against-1342-Hindus-and-Others-791801.html (Accessed on 18 December 2018)

Kashmir: Four sentenced to death in Indian-held Kashmir

24 April 2015 22:34 (Last updated 24 April 2015 22:36)

Four men were convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl in the northern Kupwara district in 2007.

By Shazia Yousuf

SRINAGAR, INDIAN HELD KASHMIR 

A court in Indian-held Kashmir on Friday sentenced four men to death after they were convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl in the northern Kupwara district in 2007. The District and Sessions court called it a “rarest of rare cases” to justify resorting to capital punishment. Tabinda Gani, an 8th grade student from the Langate area in northern Indian-held Kashmir, or IHK, was abducted, raped and murdered by the four convicts while she was on her way home from the school on July 7, 2007.

“It was a Friday and the schools closed early at noon for the Friday prayers. And Tabinda was passing through a less frequented stretch of road when these four people abducted her,” Ghulam Mohammad Shah, the public prosecutor told The Anadolu Agency. “When she failed to return home for a couple of hours, her family started looking for her and what they found was heartrending.”

Tabinda’s family and villagers, Shah said, found in an orchard bottles of alcohol and soft drinks and nearby a shoe belonging to Gani and then a piece of her dress.

“Then they found her naked body half buried under a small mound of earth and covered by hay. Her throat had been slit and she had been raped and brutalized,” Shah said. The police in the IHK arrested the four people sentenced Friday in August 2007. After a trial of eight years in which the statements of more than 80 witnesses were recorded, the court gave them the death penalty. While two of the convicted were locals from the same district, the other two were from India.

The courtroom, which was jam-packed with hundreds of people, saw numerous emotional outbursts when the verdict was delivered. Gani’s family broke down and hugged each other. They said that they hoped the verdict would bring closure to a painful journey and the unspeakable loss. “For the last eight years, we have waited to hear these words. But we continue to wait for the day when they will all be hanged,” Mohammad Iqbal, Gani’s brother said. 

The death sentence was a first for the District and Sessions judge, Mohammad Ibrahim Wani, who told The Anadolu Agency that he hoped that it would also be his last. “It is extremely difficult to sentence someone to death. Life and death are in God’s hands alone, but I followed the law. It was the rarest of rare cases and that is why I gave them capital punishment,” Wani said. Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full.

Source: http://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/499244--four-sentenced-to-death-in-indian-held-kashmir [last accessed 28.05.2015]

SC judgement on delay in execution of death sentences

NEW DELHI, September 2, 2014 In a few hours on Tuesday, a Five-Judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will deliver judgment on whether inordinate delay in execution of death sentences amounts to, in effect, subjecting a death row convict to a double punishment of life imprisonment and death penalty. Justices J. Chelameswar and Rohinton Nariman, who authors the verdict for the Bench led by Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha, would also primarily address the question as to whether review of death penalty awarded in rarest of rare cases should continue to be done in the privacy of the judges’ chambers or transparently in open court, while affording the death row convict the last opportunity to fight for his life. The judgment would be based on a batch of identical writ petitions filed by eight death row convicts, including three in the 2000 Dharmapuri bus burning case, Pakistani national Mohammed Arif alias Ashfaq in the Red Fort Attack case of 2000, 1993 Bombay serial blasts ‘mastermind’ Yakub Memon and B.A. Umesh and Sunder, both convicted in multiple murders. The Dharmapuri case relates to the death of three students – Kokilavani, Gayathri and Hemalatha – of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, when the bus they were travelling in along with 44 other students and two teachers were torched by the three convicts — Nedunchezhian, Ravindran and Muniappan - on February 2, 2000, after the conviction of AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa in a criminal case. Memon and Arif had argued in their separate petitions that years of anticipating their executions while confined in their respective jail cells has led them to suffer both mental torture. They contended that an execution now after a long term in prison would amount to serving them with both life sentence and death penalty. The convicts' petitions have separately demanded that review petitions filed against death sentence should be heard in open court by a Bench comprising from three to five judges as the issue involves taking a person’s life. They challenged the constitutional validity of the practice of judges being able to hear and dismiss review petitions by “circulation” — in judges’ chambers — rather than in open court with the convict allowed to make oral arguments. “The convict must be left with no doubt in his mind that every possible opportunity was given to him under the Constitution of India before his life was taken away following the procedure established by law,” Memon had argued in his petition. However, the judgment follows the implementation of the newly amended Supreme Court Rules 2013 from August 19. The amended rules provide that “every cause, appeal or other proceedings” in a death penalty case would be heard by a Bench of not less than three judges. Death penalty matters were usually heard by Two-Judge Benches. The 2013 Rules extend to pending death penalty-related cases also. It says any pending death sentence matters in which a Bench of less than three judges are of the opinion that the accused deserves death, the matter concerned will be referred to the Chief Justice of India, who will in turn constitute a Three-Judge Bench to hear it. Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sc-judgement-on-delay-in-execution-of-death-sentences-today/article6372320.ece [last accessed 06.02.2015]

Death anniversary: Kashmiri freedom fighter remembered

MIRPUR: The 28th death anniversary of Muhammad Maqbool Butt, a leader of the Kashmir Freedom Movement, was observed on Saturday on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) with a renewed pledge to continue his mission till the achievement of the right of self-determination.

Processions were taken out to pay tribute to Butt who was awarded the death sentence by India. He was hanged on February 11, 1984, in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail for demanding the birthright of self determination for the people of Jammu and Kashmir state under the UN resolutions and the liberation of Kashmir from Indian subjugation.

Speakers called upon the international community to exert pressure on India to immediately hand over Butt’s dead body to his family members. Speakers said that Butt’s sacrifice infused a new spirit among Kashmiris to accelerate their struggle for the achievement of their fundamental right of self-determination denied by India for the past 63 years.

Speakers also demanded the immediate demilitarisation of Indian-held Kashmir, unconditional release of all political detainees and repeal of black laws. Speakers appreciated the opening of routes across the LoC by India and Pakistan and demanded the revival of all other natural routes to enable the free movement of Kashmiris from either side without any discrimination.

Earlier, hundreds of activists of JKNLF, JKLF, Plebiscite Front, NSF and other social and political organisations took out a torch-bearing procession from Shaheed Chowk on Friday night, to highlight the contribution of the martyred Kashmiri leader to the freedom struggle.

The participants of the rally lit candles in memory of Kashmiri martyrs. Speakers urged the world community to help stop massive human rights abuses in Indian-held Kashmir. Across the LoC, Butt’s death was marked with a complete strike across the held valley.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12th, 2012.
Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/335155/death-anniversary-kashmiri-freedom-fighter-remembered/ accessed on 13th February 2012