THE DEATH PENALTY- An Introduction

Under Section 53 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 are defined the punishments to which
offenders are liable under the Statue; first of them being Death.
Regarding death as a punishment , the authors of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 have
categorically stated that it ought to be very sparingly inflicted in exceptional cases where
either murder or the highest offence against the State has been committed.
Death sentence under the Code to which offenders may be sentenced are :
1. Section 121 : Waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against the
Government of India.
2. Section 132 :Abetting mutiny actually committed.
3. Section 194 :Giving or fabricating false evidence upon which an innocent person
suffers death.
4. Section 302 :Murder which may be punished with death or life imprisonment.
5. Section 305 :Abetment of a suicide of a minor, or insane person, or intoxicated
person.
6. Section 307 :Attempt to murder by a person under sentence of imprisonment for life,
if hurt is caused.
7. Section 364A :Kidnapping for ransom.
8. Section 369 :Dacoity accompanied with murder.
Other conditions which entail the death penalty/capital punishment under the Code
include :
9. Section 120B :Criminal conspiracy to commit any offence punishable with death , if
committed in consequence thereof for which no punishment is prescribed .
10. Sections 34 and 149 : Joint liability extending the principle of constructive liability on
all the persons who conjointly commit an offence punishable with death, if committed
in furtherance of common intention or common object of all.
11. Section 109 : Abetment of offences punishable with death also entail death penalty as
punishment.
As per the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013, the following sections also award
death penalty to offenders :
12.

Section 376A :Punishment for causing death or resulting in persistent vegetative

state of the victim. Meaning thereby, whoever commits rape as per sub section (1)
or (2) of Section 376 is committed and in the course of such commission inflicts an
injury which causes the death of the women shall also be awarded with death.
13. Section 376E :Punishment for repeat offenders. Whoever has been previously
convicted under Sections 376A or 376D and is subsequently convicted of an offence

punishable under any of the sections under 376 shall be punished with imprisonment
for life which shall mean imprisonment for the remainder of that persons natural life,
or with death.

Death Penalty WHY?

Be it Adam Smiths words, Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent or Immanuel
Kants philosophical thought that A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody
who has taken somebody else's life is simply immoral ,
The strongest argument of all in favour of the death penalty is the deep pain and grief of the
families of victims, and their quite natural desire to see punishment meted out to those who
have plunged them into such agony. The supporters of capital punishment see the execution
of offenders anything but inhumane or illegal. It is only to provide solace to the grief-struck
victim that the punishment should be carried out.
A Japanese argument
This is a rather quirky argument, and not normally put forward. Japan uses the death penalty
sparingly.
The argument goes that the death penalty reinforces the belief that bad things happen to those
who deserve it.

DEATH PENALTY WHY NOT?

Capital punishment is immoral in principle, and unfair and discriminatory in practice... No
one deserves to die. When the government metes out vengeance disguised as justice, it
becomes complicit with killers in devaluing human life and human dignity.
The death penalty is not a proven deterrent to future murders.
Today, there are various reasons to oppose death penalty. People may feel it is morally wrong
to kill, people may feel it is hypocritical to punish a murdered by imitating him, people may
feel that there is no evidence that death penalty deters crime any more than life imprisonment
does. Another reason to oppose death penalty is that it is irreversible. And there are situations
where judgements have proven to be erroneous- they cannot be reversed, nothing that can be
done, it is final.- why not
The death penalty debate has proved to be long and cumbersome. With most countries of the
world abolishing this sort of punishment, it is only incidental to understand the gospel truth
that taking a convicts life amounts to providing the State with unbridled power to play with
the lives of other citizens as well.

When the phrase eye for an eye was written in the Old Testament, it didnt amount to
killing the wrongdoer straight away. The meaning was that the offender must be punished
with the kind of punishment that is neither too harsh nor too lenient. Advocates for death
penalty have been successful in mincing words and using them as a tool.
According to Amnesty International total abolitionist countries of the death penalty in law
or practice stands at 140 with Latvia being the latest to abolish it in 2012

DEATH PENALTY IN THE U.S.A

The U.S. Supreme Court banned capital punishment in 1972, deeming it unconstitutional and
cruel. Four years later, however, the Supreme Court revisited the issue and capital
punishment was resurrected in the U.S., with each state having the choice as to whether or
not they would allow it. Thirty-two currently do, and, as of the end of January 2014, a total of
1,365 people have been executed in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976,
according to the Death Penalty Information Centre1 in Washington, D.C.

DEATH PENALTY IN INDIA

Indias death penalty story is a long and controversial one. The issue of constitutionality of
death penalty or capital punishment has come up in the Courts in various cases from time to
time. India remains balanced between the global trend away from the death penalty and those
countries that continue to execute. Despite priding itself on a highly evolved rule of law
system, India has steadfastly clung to the punishment even though it acceded to the ICCPR in
1979, retaining a wall of silence.
In November 2012, India again upheld its stance on capital punishment by voting against the
UN General Assembly draft resolution seeking to ban death penalty.
While the punishments are to be imposed to deter the offenders, it is also inalienable part of
Indian penal jurisprudence that the offenders should be given opportunity for reformation.
Bearing in mind these fundamental tenets, the legislatures drafted Sec. 354 (3) of the CR.P.C.
Section 354 (3) mandates the Court convicting a person for an offence punishable with death
or, in the alternative with imprisonment for life or imprisonment for a term of years, not to
impose the sentence of death on that person unless there are "special reasons" to be recorded
for such sentence. The expression "special reasons" in the context of this provision, obviously
means "exceptional reasons" founded on the exceptionally grave circumstances of the
particular case relating to the crime as well as the criminal.
1

In Jagmohan Singh v. The State Of U. P , the bench held that the Constitution itself
through its provisions have recognised death sentence as a valid punishment.
HonbleMr. Justice Krishna Iyer had in Rajendra Prasad v. State of Uttar Pradesh stressed
that death penalty is violative of articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. However,
he made it clear that where murder is deliberate, premeditated, cold-blooded and gruesome
and there are no extenuating circumstances, the offender must be sentenced to death as a
measure of social defence.
In the landmark decision of Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab the supreme court
Propounding the Rarest of the Rare Doctrine, held that ..by no stretch of imagination can
it be said that death penalty under section 302, Indian Penal Code, either per se or because of
its execution by hanging, constitutes, an unreasonable, cruel or unusual punishment.
In the case of State of Tamil Nadu v. Nalini & others, confirming the death sentence of the
four out of a total of 26 persons in Rajiv Gandhi murder . Thomas J. was of the opinion that
Nalini, a mother of an infant must be saved from the gallows. But Wadhwa J noted that it was
not as though Nalini did not understand the nature of the crime and her participation. The
crime sent shock waves to the country and hence the death sentence must be uphleld.
In Devender Pal Singh vs. State (NCT of Delhi) (2002), the Hon'ble Supreme Court held
that, when the collective conscience of the community is so shocked, the court must award
the death sentence..
In Ajit singh Harnam singh Gujral v. State of Maharashtra, the apex court distinction
has to be drawn between ordinary murders and murders which are gruesome, ghastly or
horrendous. While life sentence should be given in the former, the latter belongs to the
category of the rarest of rare cases, and hence death sentence should be given...

LATEST ON DEATH PENALTY IN INDIA

Death Sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment on the ground of delay

The Honorable Supreme Court held on 21.01.2014 in Shatrughan Chauhan v. Union of
India that death sentence of a condemned prisoner can be commuted to life imprisonment on
the ground of delay on the part of the government in deciding the mercy plea only after
satisfying that the delay was not caused at the instance of the accused himself

Death row convicts get one final open hearing

The Supreme Court on 02.09.2014 in Mohd. ArifVs.The Registrar, Supreme Court of India
decided to shed its nearly 60-year-old rule to allow death row convicts another chance to
argue in open court and plead for life, further narrowing down the possibility of the
application of death penalty.

Recent Cases of Death Sentence

I.

The Honble Delhi High Court while reaffirming the decision of the Trial Court in the
case Ram Singh v. State (also referred to as the Nirbhaya Case) stated the following.

a strong message needs to be sent to the perpetrators of grotesque and ghastly crimes against
women that such crimes shall not be countenanced, Exemplary punishment is, therefore,
the need of the hour, for, if this is not the rarest of rare cases there is likely to be none.

Latest on executions

The last two executions to take place in India were the February 8, 2013 hanging of
Muhammad Afzal, convicted of plotting the 2001 attack on Indias Parliament, and the
hanging of 2008 Mumbai attack gunman Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab on November 21,
2012. Prior to these hangings, the last execution in India had taken place in 2004, when
Dhananjoy Chatterjee was executed by hanging for the murder and rape of a 14-year old girl.
This, in turn, was the countrys first execution since 1995.

CONCLUSION
An editorial in The Times of India on 1st November 2006 poignantly set out Indias challenge
by drawing attention to the fact that a society consumed by outrage easily confuses
punishment and revenge, justice and vendetta.
The context of this call for a public debate on the death penalty was the case of Mohammad
Afzal Guru, sentenced to death for his role in a conspiracy that led to an attack on the Indian
Parliament on 13th December 2001.
No paradigm is set by a State who avenges the death of a person with anothers death.
To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice. If we believe that murder is
wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just
individuals but governments as well.