Capital
punishment in India
Capital punishment is
a legal penalty in India. It has been carried out in nine instances since 1995,
while a total of thirty executions have taken place in India since 1991, the
most recent of which were carried out in 2020.
The Supreme Court in
Mithu vs. State of Punjab struck down Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code,
which provided for a mandatory death sentence for offenders who committed
murder whilst serving a life sentence. The number of people executed in India
since the nation achieved Independence in 1947 is a matter of dispute; official
government statistics claim that fifty-two people had been executed since
Independence. However, research by the People's Union for Civil Liberties
indicates that the actual number of executions is in fact much higher, as they
located records of 1,422 executions in the decade from 1953 to 1963 alone.
Research published by
National Law University, Delhi on death row convicts since 2000 had found that
of the 1,617 prisoners sentenced to death by trial courts in India, capital
punishment was confirmed in only seventy-one cases. NLU Delhi confirmed 755
executions in India since 1947. National Law University, Delhi examined 1,414
prisoners who were executed, in the available list of convicts hanged in post-Independence
since 1947. According to a report of the Law Commission of India (1967), the
total number of cases in which the death sentence was handed down in India from
1953-63 was 1410.
In December 2007,
India voted against a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a
moratorium on the death penalty. In November 2012, India again upheld its
stance on capital punishment by voting against the UN General Assembly draft
resolution seeking to end the institution of capital punishment globally.
On 31 August 2015,
the Law Commission of India submitted a report to the government which
recommended the abolition of capital punishment for all crimes in India,
excepting the crime of waging war against the nation or for terrorism-related
offences. The report cited several factors to justify abolishing the death
penalty, including its abolition by 140 other nations, its arbitrary and flawed
application and its lack of any proven deterring effect on criminals.
Execution
of death sentence
The execution of
death sentence in India is carried out by hanging by the neck until death.
Hanging
The Code of Criminal
Procedure (1898) called for the method of execution to be hanging. The same
method was adopted in the Code of Criminal Procedure (1973). Section 354(5) of
the above procedure reads as "When any person is sentenced to death, the
sentence shall direct that the person be hanged by the neck till the person is
dead." The hanging method is long drop, the method devised by William Marwood
in Britain. The person has their neck snapped as they fall through the trapdoor
and is left hanging until they are dead.
As of 2011, only two
people had been hanged over the previous 15 years and there was no longer a professional
hangman to be found. 8 men have been hanged so far in the 21st century, most
recently in 2020. The convicts of the Nirbhaya case were hanged till death at 5:30
am IST on 20 March 2020.
Shooting
The Army Act, The
Navy Act and The Air Force Act also provide for the execution of the death
sentence. Section 34 of the Air Force Act, 1950 empowers the court martial to
impose the death sentence for the offences mentioned in section 34(a) to (o) of
The Air Force Act, 1950. Section 163 of the Act provides for the form of the
sentence of death as:-
"In awarding a
sentence of death, a court-martial shall, in its discretion, direct that the
offender shall suffer death by being hanged by the neck until he be dead or
shall suffer death by being shot to death."
This provides for the
discretion of the Court Martial to either provide for the execution of the
death sentence by hanging or by being shot to death. The Army Act, 1950, and
The Navy Act, 1957 also provide for the similar provisions as in The Air Force
Act, 1950.
Death
penalty in Independent India
At least 100 people
in 2007, 40 in 2006, 77 in 2005, 23 in 2002, and 33 in 2001 were sentenced to
death (but not executed), according to Amnesty International figures. No
official statistics of those sentenced to death have been released.
About 26 mercy
petitions are pending before the president, some of them from 1992. These
include those of Khalistan Liberation Force terrorist Devinder Pal Singh
Bhullar, the cases of slain forest bandit Veerappan's four associates - Simon,
Gnanaprakasham, Meesekar Madaiah and Bilvendran for killing 21 policemen in
1993; and Praveen Kumar for killing four members of his family in Mangalore in
1994.
In June 2012 it
became known that Indian president Pratibha Patil, near the end of her
five-year term as president, commuted the death sentence of as many as 35
convicts to life imprisonment, including four on the same day (2 June), which created
a storm of protest. This caused further embarrassment to the government when it
came to light that one of these convicts, Bandu Baburao Tidke convicted for the
rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl had died five years previously from HIV.
There have been calls
for the introduction of the death penalty for rapists and molesters, especially
since an infamous 2012 Delhi gang rape case and later crimes.
No accurate records
are available and very little data is available in public domain on the number
of convicts who have been hanged in independent India.
List of hanging punishments in
India after independence
Punishment date
|
Punishment location
|
Convict name
|
Crime details
|
15.11.1949
|
Ambala Central Jail
|
Nathuram Godse & Narayan Apte
|
1948 Gandhi assassination
|
1978
|
Poojappura Central Jail
|
Azhakesan
|
-
|
31.01.1982
|
Tihar Central Jail
|
Kuljeet Singh & Jasbir
Singh
|
1978 Geeta and Sanjay Chopra
kidnapping case
|
09.11.1983
|
Hindalga Central Jail
|
Hanumappa Mariyappa Mariyal
|
-
|
27.11.1983
|
Yerwada Central Jail
|
Rajendra Jakkal, Dilip Sutar,
Shantaram Kanhoji Jagtap & Munawar Harun Shah
|
1976 Joshi-Abhyankar serial
murders
|
1983 November
|
Vellore Central Jail
|
Chandru (Saettu)
|
Murdering his wife and child
|
06.01.1989
|
Tihar Central Jail
|
Satwant Singh & Kehar Singh
|
1984 Indira Gandhi assassination
|
1991
|
Poojappura Central Jail
|
Ripper Chandran
|
Murders
|
09.10.1992
|
Yerwada Central Jail
|
Sukhdev Singh Sukha & Harjinder
Singh Jinda
|
1986 murders
|
27.04.1995
|
Salem Central Prison
|
Auto Shankar
|
1988 Chennai mass murders
|
14.08.2004
|
Alipore Central Jail
|
Dhananjoy Chatterjee
|
1990 Kolkata Hetal Parekh rape
& murder
|
21.11.2012
|
Yerwada Central Jail
|
Ajmal Kasab
|
2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks
|
09.02.2013
|
Tihar Central Jail
|
Afzal Guru
|
2001 Indian Parliament attack
|
30.07.2015
|
Nagpur Central Jail
|
Yakub Memon
|
1993 Bombay bombings
|
20.03.2020
|
Tihar Central Jail
|
Akshay Thakur, Mukesh Singh,
Pawan Gupta & Vinay Sharma
|
2012 Delhi Nirbaya gang rape
|
Data facts:-
1. In
1983 November itself, 6 convicts had been given the punishment in various
locations.
2. Four
convicts hanging at a time in the same hanging stage platforms took place twice
in the country, first in 1983 and the second in 2020.
3. Yakub
Memom convicted in 1993 Mumbai bombing and it taken 23 years to execute capital
punishment to him in 2015.
4. Dhananjoy
Chatterjee and Yakub Memom are the two convicts executed in their birthdays.
5. Capital
punishment is also commonly called as hanging punishment, death punishment and
penalty.
Referential notes:-
