Ahmedabad: High court commutes death sentence to life term

TNN | Apr 14, 2015, 04.06AM IST

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat high court has commuted the death sentence of a convict to life imprisonment in a case of kidnapping and murder of a 9-year-old in Navsari.

Parvez Rana (38) was awarded death penalty in 2012 by a trial court in Navsari district for murdering the boy for a ransom of Rs 50 lakh. The murder took place in 2007.

On January 4, 2007, Nayan Kachrola, son of a diamond polishing unit employee, was kidnapped from outside his school in Navsari. The kidnapper called the boy's father, Hasmukh, and demanded a ransom of Rs 50 lakh. Police were informed about the incident and the boy's father began arranging for the ransom amount.

A day later, the police recovered the kid's body in a plastic bag from a rivulet. Rana was arrested and he confessed to the crime.

Rana told police that he had kidnapped Nayan to make some quick money. He told the police that he had kept Nayan in a plastic bag and left it at his shop. He kept a watch on police movement from his shop and fearing arrest decided to kill the child. He strangled the child and threw the body in a rivulet.

Rana had challenged the death penalty in the high court. The bench of Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice V M Pancholi concluded that the case did not fall under the rarest of the rare category and reduced the punishment to life imprisonment, said Rana's lawyer Pratik Barot.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/High-court-commutes-death-sentence-to-life-term/articleshow/46914018.cms [last accessed 28.05.2015]

Chandigarh: High Court commutes death sentence of Dharampal

Dharampal had initially been sentenced to 10 years after being found guilty of rape in January 1991. 

By: Express News Service | Chandigarh | Published on:April 22, 2015 1:57 am

The Sonipat resident had been convicted of rape before he murdered the girl’s family. His rape charge was, however, set aside by the Punjab and Haryana High court in 2003, some 12 years after he had been convicted.

In a rare instance, the Punjab and Haryana High Court Tuesday commuted the death sentence of a murder convict, whose mercy plea had been rejected by the President. A division bench of Justices S K Mittal and H S Sidhu allowed the petition of Dharampal, a resident of Sonipat, on the grounds that the President had taken “13 years and five months” to decide his mercy plea. A detailed judgement is yet to be made available.

The Sonipat resident had been convicted of rape before he murdered the girl’s family. His rape charge was, however, set aside by the Punjab and Haryana High court in 2003, some 12 years after he had been convicted.

Dharampal had initially been sentenced to 10 years after being found guilty of rape in January 1991. He, however, came out on parole and on June 4, 1993, murdered the victim’s family — her father, mother and two brothers. The girl and her husband escaped as they were not there. Dharampal’s brother, Nirmal, was a co-accused in the murder case; both were convicted by a sessions court in Sonipat on May 5, 1997, and sentenced to death. The Punjab and Haryana High Court had on September 29, 1998, upheld their conviction. The Supreme Court while maintaining Dharampal’s death sentence, converted Nirmal’s death penalty to life imprisonment. On November 2, 1999, Dharampal moved a mercy petition before the President, which was rejected on March 28, 2013. Dharampal’s counsel, Navkiran Singh, however said the President was not informed about the high court’s decision, in 2003, to set aside Dharampal’s conviction on the charge of rape. 

Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/high-court-commutes-death-sentence-of-dharampal/ [last accessed 28.05.2015]

Death sentence to 3 in Assam for gruesome murder

Before the police could track down the culprits on the basis of mobile phone locations, the three had already killed Arup Dutta by beheading him. 

Written by Samudra Gupta Kashyap | Guwahati | Published on:April 22, 2015 7:38 pm -

The Morigaon districts and sessions courts on Wednesday awarded death sentence to three persons after holding them guilty in the abduction and gruesome murder of a 21-year old youth of Jagiroad town about four years ago.

Delivering a 108-page judgment, district and sessions judge Ikramul Hussain described the case as “rarest of the rare”, compared it to the abduction and murder of a schoolboy in Tinsukia district committed way back in 1975, and pronounced death sentence for the three persons – Mohan Teron, Sanjay Chand and Bhim Das – convicted under Sections 302 and 34 of the IPC in the case.

The trio had abducted Arup Dutta (21), son of Apu Dutta, a businessman of Jagiroad town in Morigaon district, about 45 kms east of Guwahati, on July 17, 2011, kept him confined in an undisclosed place, and then demanded a sum of Rs 50 lakh from his father for release of his son. The trio used a mobile phone to make the ransom demand in the name of an armed underground group.

The boy’s father however lodged an FIR with the police, but even before the police could track down the culprits on the basis of mobile phone locations, the three had already killed Arup Dutta by beheading him with a sharp dao (machete) in a densely forested hill in the adjoining Karbi Anglong district and concealed the body. The police, after arrest of the three culprits one after the other, later recovered the highly decomposed beheaded body of Arup Dutta from the Amguri hills in Karbi Anglong, which was identified on the basis of DNA tests. The trio also confessed to have killed Arup on August 28, 2011, with the judgment noting that they continued to demand money for the release of Arup even after he was killed.

Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/death-sentence-to-3-in-assam-for-gruesome-murder/ [last accessed 28.05.2015]

Four get death penalty for Kashmir gangrape, murder

April 24,2015, 05.02 PM IST | | IANS

Srinagar: A trial court in the Kupwara border district of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday sentenced four people to death in a 2007 gang rape and murder of a 13 year-old girl. Principal District and Sessions Judge Kupwara, Muhammad Ibrahim Wani, announced the sentence on Friday. He pronounced all the four accused as guilty, awarding them death penalty.

On July 20, 2007, Tabinda Gani, of Batpora Langate, was found dead in an orchard in Kupwara. The body of Tabinda, a class eight student, was found with her throat slit. Medical reports confirmed that the girl had been raped before being murdered. The four convicts are Sadiq Mir and Azhar Mir of Langate Kupwara and two non-locals, Jehangir Ansari of West Bengal and Suresh Kumar of Rajasthan.

The family of the victim and the civil society hailed the court verdict. The incident had rocked Kashmir with large scale protests demanding severe punishment for the culprits.

Source: http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-04-24/Four-get-death-penalty-for-Kashmir-gangrape-murder-146659 [last accessed 28.05.2015]

Death penalty is judicially sanctioned murder – it doesn’t tackle crime or terrorism

Indian lawmakers hold up capital punishment as a symbol of their resolve to tackle crime. Don’t be taken in by their cynical ploy.

Divya Iyer · Apr 23, 2015 · 01:30 pm

“Mukesh Singh just made the case for death penalty stronger,” ran the headline of a news report on a BBC documentary on the 2012 Delhi gang-rape. The film India’s Daughter was banned by the Indian government, but people logged onto the internet anyway to see the rape-murder convict defending himself and blaming the victim for the sexual assault. His lack of remorse sparked widespread outrage in the country, with the mainstream and social media erupting with calls for Mukesh Singh to be hanged. Once again.

A similar demand for the death penalty had come from certain sections of society in the immediate aftermath of the gang-rape in December 2012. Although those calls were resisted by several rights organisations, feminist groups and scholars, the most definitive statement against the extreme measure of death penalty had come from the Justice Verma Committee, which noted that, “In our considered view…the seeking of death penalty would be a regressive step in the field of sentencing and reformation…[I]n the larger interests of society, and having regard to the current thinking in favor of abolition of the death penalty…we are not inclined to recommend the death penalty.”

The numbers speak for themselves – in 1945, when the United Nations was founded, only eight countries had abolished the death penalty, while today 140 states are abolitionist in law or practice.

Let’s be clear – advocating the abolition of capital punishment does not mean that crimes should go unpunished. The question is whether punishment by the state should descend into something akin to revenge or barbarity. The anger or hurt felt by the victims’ families is understandable. The public outrage against terrorism and the demand for improving women’s safety is also justified. But let us not be under any illusion that a death sentence will more successfully deter rape, murder or any other crime for that matter.

A worldwide trend

Executions kill the criminal, not the crime. There is no evidence that the threat of execution is more of a deterrent to crime than a prison sentence. This fact has been confirmed in multiple studies in many regions around the world, including by the United Nations. The Justice Verma Committee came to the same conclusion, noting that “there is considerable evidence that the deterrent effect of death penalty on serious crimes is actually a myth”.

The key to deterrence is the likelihood of detection, arrest and conviction for a crime. The conviction rate for rape in India was 27% at the end of 2013. Thousands of crimes against women go unreported, or do not lead to investigations and chargesheets, or are delayed in trial for years. When the swiftness and certainty of punishment is so low, its severity by itself has little preventive effect.

Lawmakers in India often find it convenient to hold up capital punishment as a symbol of their resolve to tackle crime, and choose to ignore more difficult and effective solutions like improving investigations, prosecutions and care for victims’ families. Unfortunately, the same trend was evident last year across the world – with governments using the death penalty in a misguided, often cynical, attempt to tackle crime and terrorism. Amnesty International’s latest annual report on the death penalty worldwide found that an alarming number of countries used the death penalty to tackle real or perceived threats to state security posed by terrorism, crime or internal instability in 2014.

In December 2014, in the wake of the Peshawar school terrorist attack that killed 149 people, mainly children, Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on executions. More than 50 people have been put to death since.

Executions for terrorism-related offences continued to be recorded in China, Iran and Iraq. Jordan started using the death penalty again, and Indonesia moved close to carrying out executions – both justifying their actions as responses to crime.

In a year when abhorrent summary executions by armed groups were branded on the global consciousness like never before, it is appalling that governments are themselves resorting to more executions in a knee-jerk reaction to terrorism.

Self-perpetuating cycle

The death penalty is little more than judicially sanctioned murder. Far from deterring crime, it can create more misery, perpetuating the cycle of violence and reprisal.

Amnesty International’s report reveals that last year, 112 people were exonerated in nine countries after they were sentenced to death – this is a significant number of innocent lives saved. We found that in majority of countries where people were sentenced to death or executed, the capital punishment was imposed after proceedings that did not meet international fair trial standards.

In several countries – including Afghanistan, China and Saudi Arabia – death sentences were based on “confessions” made under duress, and were awarded for non-lethal crimes, such as drug-related offences, corruption, committing adultery, “insulting the prophet of Islam”, and “witchcraft”.

Crime must be prevented and punished, but in full respect of human rights and dignity. Society has come a long way from the middle ages, when justice was meted out with floggings and public hangings. But a civilised society needs to tackle crime based on reasoned forms of punishment. As the French philosopher Michel Foucault observed, “It is the certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage crime.”

Gratefully, not all is grim. There is some good news as well. Excluding China, at least 607 executions were recorded in 2014, down by almost 22% from 2013. Twenty-two countries were known to execute in 2014, the same number as the year before. This is a significant drop from 20 years ago, when Amnesty International recorded executions in 41 countries, and highlights the clear global trend of states moving away from the death penalty.

Those governments that continue to execute need to realise that they are on the wrong side of history. They need to join the vast majority of countries who have dropped the ultimate cruel punishment. Campaigning for an end to the death penalty remains an uphill task, but Amnesty International and many others are determined to make the world free of this extreme punishment. By this time next year, we hope that we will have more good news to report.

The author is Research Manager, Amnesty International India.

Source: http://scroll.in/article/719778/death-penalty-is-judicially-sanctioned-murder-it-doesnt-tackle-crime-or-terrorism [last accessed 28.05.2015]

Read Bhagat Singh's death warrant on his 84th martyrdom anniversary

IndiaToday.in  New Delhi, March 23, 2015 | UPDATED 17:02 IST

On 23rd March 1931, India witnessed the execution of three of its most influential and popular revolutionaries. As we pay homage to Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on their 84th martyrdom anniversary on Monday, here is a picture of the death warrant of Bhagat Singh, issued to the superintendent of the Central Jail of Lahore, signed by the president of the tribunal.

The image has been doing rounds on the social media.

Bhagat Singh and B K Dutt threw a bomb inside the Central Assembly hall in New Delhi on April 8, 1929 to protest against the British rule in India. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were also tried for shooting and killing British Superintendent of Police Saunders on December 17, 1928, and were awarded the death sentence. Following a hasty trial of the Lahore Conspiracy Case, they were executed by the British a day earlier than the scheduled hanging in the Central Jail at Lahore at 7.15 pm on March 23, 1931.

Source: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/bhagat-singh-death-warrant-martyrdom-anniversary/1/425237.html [last accessed 09 April 2015]

India one of top 10 nations where death sentences were handed out last year

Kounteya Sinha & Anahita Mukherji, TNN | Apr 1, 2015, 06.35AM IST

LONDON/MUMBAI: Indian courts sentenced 64 people to death in 2014, making India one of the top 10 in a list of 55 countries where such sentences were handed out last year.

India was also one of seven countries that had executed people on 2013, but carried out no executions in 2014, Amnesty International's Death Penalty Report 2015 released on Tuesday noted.

The figures from India mirror worldwide data, which shows a 22% decrease in executions in 2014 compared with the previous year, but a 28% increase in death sentences when compared with 2013.

While at least 607 people were executed worldwide in 2014, 2,466 were sentenced to death. Three countries — Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia — were responsible for 72% of the 607 recorded executions.

The figure for executions represents the minimum number of people executed, as data on the death penalty is a state secret in Belarus, China and Vietnam, while little or no information was available from countries like Syria and North Korea.

Though China does not release official figures for the death penalty, Amnesty International monitored executions in the country and found them to be more that the rest of the world put together.

Amnesty has taken a clear stand against the death sentence. "Governments using the death penalty to tackle crime are deluding themselves. There is no evidence that the threat of execution is a greater deterrent to crime than any other punishment," Amnesty International secretary general Salil Shetty said. 

"Governments must stop justifying judicial killing on the notion that it has a unique deterrent effect," added Amnesty's death penalty expert Chiara Sangiorgio.

The Death Penalty Research Project of the National Law University (Delhi) found 270 people in India were currently on death row, while eight had their mercy petitions rejected in 2014.

The 64 new death sentences handed out in India last year were for murder and, for the first time since the 2013 amendment to the criminal law, for rape by repeat offenders.

"In India, as with a lot of other countries, violence against women has been used to justify the death penalty. And yet, study after study across the world shows that there is no proof that death penalty is a greater deterrent for crime than imprisonment," said Shailesh Rai, senior policy advisor at Amnesty International India.

He said handing out death sentences is mere tokenism, and evades the real problem which can only be solved through judicial and police reforms.

"The conviction rate for rape in India is 27% and this is only for cases that make it to the trial stage. Only one in 100 cases of sexual violence are reported. When the certainty of punishment is so low, increasing the severity of punishment at the end of a long and tedious process makes for a false argument in support of the death sentence."

The execution of Afzal Guru, points out Rai, is an instance where the death penalty was used as a political tool, rather than a tool for criminal justice. India hanged him in secret in February 2013.

In a landmark judgment in January 2014, the Supreme Court commuted the death sentences of 15 people — 13 on the grounds of an inordinate delay in hearing their mercy petitions, and two on the grounds of mental illness.

The judgment noted that an "undue, inordinate and unreasonable delay in execution of death sentence amounted to torture".

The Asia-Pacific region recorded a decline in the number of death sentences in 2014 compared with the previous year, largely because Bangladesh recorded a very high number of death sentences in 2013.

Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on executing civilians after the attack on a Peshawar school. Incidentally, the US is the only country in the Americas to carry out executions.

From 1995 to 2014, Amnesty recorded a 66% increase in the number of countries abolishing the death penalty, from 59 to 98.

During this period, there has also been a nearly 50% decline in the number of countries carrying out executions, which came down from 41 to 22.

Death Sentence And Executions 2014: Amnesty International report

Executions took place in 22 countries in 2014, the same number of countries as in 2013

At least 607 executions were carried out worldwide, a decrease of almost 22% compared with 2013. (China not included, doesn't share data)

At least 2,466 people are known to have been sentenced to death in 2014, a 28% increase compared with 2013 (largely because of Egypt/Nigeria)

7 countries, including India that executed convicts in 2013 did not do so in 2014

While the government of India scheduled several executions in 2014, none were carried out

Over 64 people in India sentenced to death in 2014

270 people in India were under the sentence of death and that eight people had their mercy petitions rejected in 2014

Pakistan lifted 6-year moratorium on the execution of civilians in the wake of the Peshawar school attack.

Commutations or pardons of death sentences recorded in 28 countries including India.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/India-one-of-top-10-nations-where-death-sentences-were-handed-out-last-year/articleshow/46764947.cms [last accessed 09 April 2015]