Abolition Of Death Penalty In India

Abolition Of Death Penalty In IndiaMahatma Gandhi, who preached non-violence and through the same was booming in attaining independence for colonial India, said the above lines. Eye for an affection refers to vengeance which contrasts the Gandhian ideology of non-violence.In contrast, India has decided to retain the most beastly habitus of penalisation remnant punishment, which has been abolished by 131 some new(prenominal) countries. Tracing the fib of abolishment of conclusion penalization in India, it dates back to 27th January1931, when this thin was brought ab come on in the legislative assembly headed by Shri Gaya Prasad Singh.2Death penalty is one of the oldest take a craps of punishment, even though the method of execution has evolved over the years. This form of punishment has been prescribed to a lower inject the Indian Penal Code, 1860 which introduced the preliminary concepts of vicious lawfulness in India. To a layman, termination penalty is awarded for offences like make section 302 of IPC. The most recent execution had been that of DhananjoyChatterjee, whose suit of clothes has been examined in expatiate in our paper. This paper depart study the recent trends of abolition of last penalty and evaluate Indias stand on the same. After this, various facts get out be discussed to worst the stairsstand the meaning and image of the term r arfiedst of r be. Our main cutting in discussion is that of DhananjoyChatterjee, who was awarded wipeout penalty. This case will bring out the restrictive adaptation of high-mindedst of uncommon term. To sum up, the purpose of our paper is to designate forrader the arguments in favour of abolition of ending penalty.RECENT TRENDS OF ABOLOTION OF destruction PENALTYBan Ki-Moon, Secretary General of UN, in 2007 said, I grapple the growing trend in inter internal law and in national practice towards a phasing out of the demise penalty.3There has been a universal concern regarding the abolition of death penalty. The UN General lying made the rootage instance towards any such(prenominal) abolition in 1948 by adopting habitual Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). They strongly advocated the concept of right(a) to disembodied spirit. Article 3 and 5 of UDHR cater to the inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 6 states that no one should be deprived of bearing and the countries, which are still practicing death penalty, excoriate must be given for the most serious nuisance in accordance with the law. India too claims to spend a penny retained death penalty on the establish that it will be awarded tho in the rarest of rare cases and for special reasons.4Amnesty International depicts mention that a total of 131 countries have abolished death penalty. While 66 other countries have chosen to retain this form of punishment but the sum up of countries actu ally executing the punishment is in the minority.5In 2007, the UN General Assembly ap proved a resolution, which called all the states to establish a ban on execution with the purpose of abolishing the death penalty. This further strengthens the movement against this form of punishment. xlviii countries including India opposed countries that voted in favor of it. In light of the above tuition India must realize the importance of abolishing death penalty in sight to keep up with the rest of the world. It must be kept in mind that Indias stand in retaining death penalty is contrary to the transnational trend but it always seeks for justifiable ground to award such punishments.DHANANJOY CHATTERJEE Alias DHANA v. STATE OF WEST BENGALIn the present case, DhananjoyChatterjee, the accuse, impaird and bump off a 18 year old school going girl. The special Session judge found him guilty and convicted the charge (i) for an offence downstairs Section 302 IPC and sentenced him to death, (ii) for an offence under Section 376 IPC and sentenced him to imprisonment for life, and (iii) for the offence under Section 380 IPC, he was sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for five year. The gamy court confirm the death sentence afterwards which the appeal was filed, and the self-governing Court confirmed death sentence again. evaluator AS Ananad examined the case in the light of the circumstantial evidence since there were no eyewitnesses and confirmed death penalty. He categorized this case under the rarest of rare cases disceptation that it was a cold blooded pre-planned brutal pip, without any provocation, after committing rape on an innocent and defenseless young girl of 18 years. He further says that such a case deserves no other punishment than chapiter punishment.India has witnessed various heinous iniquitys but the biggest problem faced by the courts is whether to categorize a particular murder under the rarest of rare cases. though the term rarest of rare is complicated to define, but the Supreme Court in Bachhan Singhs explained what c onstitutes rarest of rare. The Supreme Court discussed the circumstances of such cases. These circumstances include that the murder act should be extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting or dastardly way of life so as to arouse intense and extreme indignation of the community, it should be for a motive which evinces total depravity and meanness, murder of a schedule cast or scheduled tribe- arousing social wrath ( non for mortalal reasons), bride burn down/ dowry death, murderer in a dominating position, position of imprecate or in course of betrayal of the motherland, where it is enormous in harmonize or when the victim is an innocent child, helpless woman, old/infirm person, human race figure generally loved and respected by the community.In Panchhi v verbalize of Uttar Pradesh, one of the primal cases which stated that barbarism is non the only component part that determines whether the case will fall under the rarest of rare menage and thereby, life impri sonment muckle be a better replacement rather than commuting death sentence. The court opined-No doubt brutality looms large in the murders in this case particularly of the old and besides the tender age child. It may be that the manner in which a murder was perpetrated may be a ground but not the sole measurement for judging whether the case is one of the rarest of rare cases as indicated in Bachan Singhs case.6In State of Maharashtra v Bharat Fakir Dhiwar, even though the accused was held guilty of murder and rape, but the High court weak the accused. Furthermore, the Supreme Court refused to take strong stand on death penalty and awarded life imprisonment. Instead, the accused was awarded with life imprisonment. The facts of the cases are, prima facie, diabolical that the lesser option was to give life imprisonment instead of death sentence.EdigaAnamma v. State of Andhra Pradesh is another landmark judgment which involves death penalty awarded to female criminals. Justice K rishna Iyer on the basis of certain(p) factors like gender, socio economic background, and age, psychic converse the punishment from death sentence to life imprisonment. It was laid down that enchantment evaluating the death penalty, the crime committed should not be the sole criterion for determining the crime but various other factors should too be taken into account.The case of SwamyShraddananda and MuraliManohar Mishra v. State of Karnataka is another case which depicts restricted interpretation of rarest of the rare category. Life imprisonment usually of 14 years was wide for the remaining life of the accused. This was the first time that a court act to award life imprisonment by altering the period of punishment.In Santosh Kumar SatishBhushanBariyarvs State of Maharashtra, the accused with three others lured the victim to a particular place with the purpose of confining his movement to ask for ransom. They threatened to kill him if the family did not pay the ransom. Event ually they killed the victim and cut his body into pieces to dispose of at different places. Along with Bariyar, the other accused were also arrested and charged under S.302 and S.364B read with S.120B of the IPC. Bariyar was awarded death sentence which was upheld by the high court stating that Bariyar was the wiz of the act. However, the Supreme Court refused to award death penalty based on the reasoning that the circumstances were not sufficient enough to constitute rarest of the rare case. The court further supported the judgment by saying that the accused were not professional killers, without any criminal history, but the motive of collecting the money had lead them commit the crime. They relied on the theories of punishment and believe that the Bariyar could be reformed and rehabilitated and hence awarded him rigorous life imprisonment. This is a landmark case which is a step closer to the abolition of death penalty in India, hence was well received by the abolitionists.7In other run-in it restricted the scope of rarest of the rare cases. From the facts it can be gauged that the crime committed was extremely grotesque yet the punishment awarded was not in proportion. base on the landmark cases and the work done by B.B Pande on capital punishment, well be examining the legal perspectives in support of abolition of death penalty in India. The arguments made in favour of the abolition can be discussed in a thematical framework. In Rajendra Prasad v State of U.P, certain fundamental issues relating to law haveRight to life is the fundamental right as laid down in the constitution. This theme plays an important mathematical function in the debate against death penalty. The constitutional arguments as raised by Justice Krishna Iyer in Rajendra Prasad v State of U.P will be fall an abolitionists perspective. The points raised by Justice Iyer are 1) the deprivation of life under our system is too fundamental to be permitted save on the gravest ground and un der the strictest scrutiny if Justice, Dignity, Fair Procedure are creed ally constitutional8. 2) The right to life and to fundamental freedom is deprived when he (accused) is hanged to death, is self-worth is defiled when his neck is noosed and strangled.93) The judge who sits to decide between death penalty and life sentence must ask himself Is it reasonably needful to extinguish his freedom of speech of assembly and association of free-movement, by move out finally the very flame of life?10he goes into the remembrance of the judge deciding the death penalty and is it reasonable to extinguish to all flame of life out of the accused.114) you cannot be unusually cruel for that spells whimsey and violates Article 14.125) Through this he is trying to bring to notice that this form of punishment violates article (14) which talk about equality before law such punishments are also in violation of the Preamble which speaks of dignity of the individual.135) you cannot inflict degradi ng punishment since the precede speaks of the dignity of the individual. 6) Social Justice, which the preamble and Article 38 highlight as paramount in the governing of the country, also has a role to mould the sentence.14Through these arguments put forward by Justice Iyer clearly indicates him to be a believer of abolition of death penalty. Through the issues he wants to highlight the basic rights, one of them organism Right to Life which is violated on execution of death penalty. In his argument, he highlights that the death penalty deprives the criminal from right to life and questions if the crime committed is so grave that a constitutional right ineluctably to be compromised on? In contrary, all other fundamental rights are given equal importance in India. Such degrading punishments vanquish the purpose of Article (14) which talks about equality before law. In other words, this form of punishment can be said to be unconstitutional.Justice Iyer points out to the absence of p roper guidelines and standards in accolade life imprisonment or death sentence in Section. 302 of IPC. This in forge gives over- wide power in matters of life and death. Sections. 303 and 307 prescribe death penalty as the only form of punishment. Section.302 prescribes only one substitute(a) to death penalty i.e. life imprisonment. The basic problem arising here is that the only alternative to death penalty is life imprisonment. So, the question of when and which punishment is left at the discretion of the judges. Another matter complexing the situation is that the punishments under IPC are limited. Therefore, the scope of awarding punishments in brutal and diabolical cases is restricted because of the sections enacted under IPC.Among the dominant theory of punishments, one of the important factors of death penalty is deterrence. This element of death penalty is given a lot of importance because it has been presumed by the courts that will deter crimes to be committed in the fu ture. This theory is supported by Justice Sen, who argued that the deterrence is generally held to be the most important, although the continuing public demand for retribution cannot be ignored.15It is still believed that through death penalty deterrence can be the factor that refrain a person from committing a crime. However, the statistics shows that this impression about deterrence is proved to be wrong. jibe to the Indian Crime Report of 2007 which states disturbing figures, 19,89,673 are crimes partaked to IPC.16It also shows that the IPC crime rate in 2007 was 175.1 whereas in 2006 it was 167.7.17These figures clearly contradict the presumptions taken by the courts on deterrence. Thus, it is also stated in the 35th report produced in 1967 the Law Commission took the view that capital punishment acted as a deterrent to crime.18A deeper study of the implications of death penalty gives us a social aspect of this punishment which is not evident otherwise. In this perspective we can observe that the death penalty affects the brusque and the helples that are to be fostered by the law. The profound role of the law is to protect the people and society by laying down rules for the proper justice. However, the figure out and the practices implemented till now have been biased specially towards the poor and the helpless. The social inequalities are highlighted through the judgments given in different cases. In DayanidhiBisoi v State of Orissa, the accused was working as a drudge which indicates about its weak economic background. Thus, this element is betokening of the wrong judgment execute by the courts.According to the cases stated above, it is evident that the rarest of rare term has been taken in a restrictive manner. Even after the guildines laid down by the court in the Bachhan Singh case, the judicial discretion has played an important role in defining the rarest of rare cases. For every offence where death penalty is awarded, the court looks at vari ous aspects of the offence to decide whether it is rare enough to award death penalty. In Rajendra Prasad case, the court defined the parameters for awarding death penalty. It was further stated that the death penalty must relate to the criminal and not with the crime. In Bariyar case, brutality was not the only factor for determining death sentence for the accused, the court emphasized on the other aspects like the professional background of the accused as well as his criminal history. In EdigaAnamma case, the female criminals socio-economic background was looked into. Therefore, it can be confidently said that inspite of many death penalties awarded no clear standard has evolved to clear the stand of the courts on rarest of rare term. This gives rise to erroneous judgments which in the olden have taken place in almost seven cases convicting xiii criminals and awarding them death penalty. Coming to the DhananjoyChatterjees case, in light of the above arguments, the crime or the c riminal clearly does not come under the rarest of rare cases. There is a thin line between the rarest of rare and median(a) case but again its judicial discretion that plays the deciding factor. endingVarious arguments have been made in favor of the abolition of death penalty. The purpose of this paper is to bring together the analysis from the landmark cases to educe what constitutes rarest of rare. The judgment in Bariyar can be considered as a significant one because it gave importance to the reformatory and rehabilitation scheme. The court said that the criminal prosecution has to first prove that the case belong to the rarest of the rare category after which they also have to provide evidence as to why accused was not fit for any kind of reformation. After which, the death sentence could be awarded. It is important for a developing nation like ours to check over up to the international standards and do away with the forms of punishment that hinder its progress.We accept tha t India works towards complete abolition of death penalty