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ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY; ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
Death penalty or capital punishment is a legal process whereby a person is put to death by the
state as a punishment for his inquitious act of crime.
It is the punishment which is to be awarded for the most heinous, grievous and detestable crimes
against humanity. While the definition and extent of such crimes vary from country to country,
state to state and age to age, the implication of capital punishment has always been the death
sentence be it through hanging till death, administering a lethal injection or damning to the chair
in certain nations.
Death punishment has always been a part of the criminal justice system not only in India but also
in the whole world since time immemorial. Still there has been a conundrum globally towards
the abolition of death/capital punishment. Sc suggests that offences resulting in death are
exclusive to quite an extent and are punishable by death only when they meet the “rarest of rare”
standard laid out in the Bachhan Singh case.
According to a study by National Law University in Delhi, 755 people have been hanged in
independent India until now. Half of these are accounted for by Uttar Pradesh, followed by
Haryana, 90 and Madhya Pradesh with 73 executions.
The crimes punishable with death term in India fall under aegis of The Prevention of Child
Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) 2012, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act 1989, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967, Maharashtra Control of
Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) 1999, Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS)
1985, various sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) 1860 and Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC)
1973 among others.
However fair implementation of death penalty is far from reality as it faces several challenges
and as per the data persists the ratio of conviction digresses and predominately skews in the
favour of plutocrats, learned and genrailties while dealing an odd hand to the illiterate, backward
classes, and minorties in every sphere of the society further proselytizing/endorsing to travesty of
justice.
According to the national figures, 74.1% of the prisoners sentenced to death in India are
economically vulnerable according to their occupation and landholding. Amongst the states with
10 or more prisoners sentenced to death, Kerala had the highest proportion of economically
vulnerable prisoners sentenced to death with 14 out of 15 prisoners (93.3%) falling in this
category. Other states which had 75% or more prisoners sentenced to death belonging to the
‘economically vulnerable’ category were Bihar (75%), Chhattisgarh (75%), Delhi (80%), Gujarat
(78.9%), Jharkhand (76.9%), Karnataka (75%) and Maharashtra (88.9%).
23% of prisoners sentenced to death had never attended school. A further 9.6% had barely
attended but had not completed even their primary school education. Amongst the states with a
substantial number of prisoners on death row, Bihar (35.3%) and Karnataka (34.1%) had the
highest proportion of prisoners who never donned a pen. Kerala is the only state (amongst those
states with 10 or more prisoners sentenced to death) where all prisoners had at least attended
school.
Religious minorities also comprised a disproportionate share of the prisoners sentenced to death
in Gujarat, Kerala and Karnataka. For example, In Gujarat, out of the 19 prisoners sentenced to
death 15 were Muslims (79%), while 60% of the prisoners sentenced to death in Kerala were
religious minorities (five Muslims and four Christians amongst 15 prisoners sentenced to death).
Of the 45 prisoners sentenced to death in Karnataka, 31.8% were religious minorities (10
Muslims and four Christians).
Although the concept of capital punishment is plagued with certain quandaries, it is one of the
most important elements of justice administration and law enforcement as it deters and works as
a bulwark against the perpetrators who even balk the fundamentals of humanity right off the face
of this planet.
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1Divyansh Singh Dev, BBA LLB.