Harihar Swarup
Should death penalty be abolished in India? Perhaps, not; time has not yet come to put a moratorium on capital punishment. Whatever view the Human Right activists may hold, the ultimate punishment acts as a deterrent to potential criminals. Look at three monstrous crimes that have taken place in India in recent years, forcing the Government to have a rethink on banning of death penalty. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde had only recently spoken of having second thoughts on the death penalty, days after 26/11 convict Ajmal Kasab’s top-secret execution on November 21.
The first was that of Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani national, who was among 10 gunmen who attacked Mumbai on November 26, 2008, laying seize of the metropolis for nearly three days and, along with Pakistan terrorists, killing 166 people. He was sentenced to death in 2010 after being found guilty on numerous charges, including murder, conspiracy to murder and waging war against India. He was hanged in secret in a prison in Pune, after he lost his appeals and the President rejected his plea for clemency.
Afzal Guru, an Indian national, hailing from Kashmir, was convicted of conspiracy in connection with the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and was sentenced to death. If the security guards were not alert, he and his associates, would have wiped out entire Indian leadership. What can be more serious than this? The Supreme Court upheld the sentence, ruling that the attack “shocked the conscience of the society at large”. Afzal was scheduled to be executed on October 20, 2006, but the sentence was stayed. His case remained a volatile political issue. Afzal was hanged on February 9, 2013 at Delhi’s Tihar jail.
On February 3, 2013, in response to public outcry over a brutal gang rape in Delhi, the government promulgated an ordinance, which applied death penalty in cases of rape that leads to death or leaves the victim in a “persistence vegetable state”. On March 13, 2012, a court in Sirsa, Haryana, condemned the 22-year-old, Nikka Singh, for raping a 75-year-old woman and, later, murdering her by gagging her mouth with a shawl and strangling her neck with her salwar.
Capital punishment is legal but rarely carried out in India. Imposition of the penalty is not always followed by executive (even when it is upheld on appeal), because of the possibility of commutation to life imprisonment. Since 1995, it has been used only four times, on Auto Shankar in 1995, Dhananjoy Chatterjee in 2004, Ajmal Kasab in 2012 and Afzal Guru in 2013.
The Supreme Court had ruled in 1983 that death penalty should be imposed only in “the rarest of rate”. Crimes which are punishable by death sentence are murder, gang robbery, abetting the suicide of a child or an insane person, waging war against the nation, and abetting mutiny by a member of the armed forces. In 1989, the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance (NDPS) Act was passed which applied mandatory death penalty for a second offence of “large scale narcotics trafficking”.
Apex Court has recommended the death penalty be extended to those found guilty of committing “honour killing” with the Supreme Court stating that honour killing fall within the “rarest of the rare” category and deserves to be a capital crime.
In December 2007, India voted against a UN 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 UNGA draft resolution seeking to ban death penalty.
In India, the death penalty is carried out by hanging. An attempt to challenge this method of execution failed in the Supreme Court, which stated in its 1983 judgment that hanging did not involve torture, barbarity, humiliation and degradation. Once sentenced, a defendant has the right to appeal against the sentence as well as the conviction.
Since time immemorial death penalty has been practiced all over the world, whether they live in advanced societies or in tribal areas. It is assumed that death is the ultimate punishment. There are many societies where physical mutilation is still practiced instead of death straightaway. For instance, they blind a person, amputate him or her, publicly flog him or her, and carry out stoning. In the civilised world, rightfully, such punishments are considered barbaric. We in India have two options; jail a person for as long as possible (it is normally 14 years maximum) or kill him.
The India Government is committed to the retention of the death penalty. In December 2007, India was among the minority of countries who voted at the UNGA against a moratorium on executions. India retains the death penalty as punishment for a number of crimes including murder, kidnapping, terrorism, desertion and inducement to suicide of a minor or a mentally retarded person. It is mandatory for the second conviction for drug trafficking offences. (IPA)
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