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Make no mistake. India needs to step up and abolish death penalty

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N Jayaram
N JayaramDec 30, 2015 | 21:54

Make no mistake. India needs to step up and abolish death penalty

As 2015 ends, the number of countries that have abolished the death penalty has risen by four. Although small in population, the four - Fiji, Madagascar, Mongolia and Surinam - have boosted the list of abolitionist countries beyond 100. Thus as 2016 dawns, the number of member states of the United Nations that have ditched the death penalty in law or in practice - the term "abolitionist in practice" meaning that a country has not executed anyone for so many years that it is deemed to have scrapped it for all intents and purposes - has grown closer to 150. Thus a majority of the world's states are consigning state-sponsored blood lust to history.

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However, among the retentionist states are China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Pakistan and the United States, to name but a few: A mix of autocratic and supposedly democratic ones.

In the last named country, namely the United States, support for the death penalty is at historic lows. In May, Nebraska became the 19th state to abolish the death penalty, its Republican dominated legislature showing rare resolve to override a veto by the state's ultra-conservative Governor Pete Ricketts. In Connecticut, the state's Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Pennsylvania's Governor Tom Wolf imposed a moratorium on executions, the fourth state to take that route towards abolition. A few other states have not carried out an execution for so many years that they are for all practical purposes, abolitionist.

Death penalties carried out in the United States fell to their lowest levels in 24 years. The use of death penalty in the United States and support for it there declined further in 2015: the number of death sentences imposed declined and executions carried out too fell steeply. Indefatigable campaigning by human rights organisations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty USA, Human Rights Watch and activists such as Sister Helen Prejean, the celebrated author of Dead Man Walking mean that today a majority of Americans prefer life without parole to the death penalty.

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Many survivors of horrific murders and rapes have spoken out against the death penalty, banding themselves into organisations such as Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights. That the death penalty remains deeply flawed was once again proven by the fact that six more people were exonerated from death row this year. Meanwhile, Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court issued an historic minority opinion stating that the death penalty could no longer be administered fairly and thus could be unconstitutional.

Elsewhere in the world the news has been gloomy. Iran is said to carry out three executions every day. According to Amnesty International, it had carried out 700 executions in the first six months of 2015. But there too, some weary voices are being raised in opposition. Earlier this week, the chief of Iran's Human Rights Office Mohammad JavadLarijaninoted that executions have failed to reduce crime rates and that their use in the judicial system needs revision. Earlier, 70 out of Iran's 290 parliamentarians issued a call for abolishing the death penalty for non-violent drug offences.

In Saudi Arabia, more than 150 people have been executed this year. Pakistan lifted a seven-year moratorium on capital punishment in December 2014, following the massacre of 132 children in Peshawar and has executed more than 300 people, according to Amnesty and Justice Project Pakistan. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had initially said only terror convicts would be executed but those convicted of murders and other crimes too have been put to death. In October, the government said more than 6,000 people were on death row but other estimates put the figure at 8,000.

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China and North Korea are said to execute vast numbers of people but the figures remain state secrets. Indonesia executed a number of people convicted of drug trafficking, the move coming as a shock, especially as the country appeared earlier to be willing to heed calls for eschewing the death penalty.

In India, the year had started on a positive note: in February the Allahabad High Court commuted to life the death sentence passed on SurinderKoli in the "Nithari Killings" case. Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PKS Baghel did not go into the merits of the case against Koli but limited themselves to the manner in which his mercy petitions were handled. (There is plenty of evidence to show that Koli was almost entirely innocent, that he was framed and that the real culprits who were most likely engaged in organ trade got off scot free thanks to poor investigation of the incident.)

In July, Yakub Memon, convicted in connection with the 1993 Bombay bombings was executed on his 53rd birthday, following a hasty post-midnight rejection of his mercy plea by the Supreme Court. He was hanged despite many eminent persons' pleas for sparing his life on the grounds that he had cooperated with the investigations, had provided useful information and had already spent more than two decades in jail. Incidentally, he was the third Muslim in a row to be put to death by the Indian state after the Pakistani Ajmal Kasab and the Kashmiri Afzal Guru (the latter most likely falsely implicated in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack but killed to satiate the "collective conscience of the society" as the Supreme Court infamously put it.)

Prior to Kasab's execution, there had been a kind of undeclared moratorium after the hanging of Dhananjoy Chatterjee in 2004. The People's Union for Democratic Rights earlier this year released an extensive report based on new research by Professors Probal Chaudhuri and Debasis Sengupta of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, showing that Chatterjee was most likely framed.

No doubt, the possibility of hanging innocent people who lack competent legal counsel was one of the numerous reasons that persuaded the Law Commission to recommend that the death penalty be abolished for all crimes other than terrorism. The commission's concession to the retentionists in respect of terrorism was unfortunate. In India far too many people - as was the case most likely with Afzal Guru - are falsely accused of colluding with terrorists. Witness the torture to which Professor GN Saibaba is being put: the man who is 90 per cent disabled and who is convicted of no crime has been denied bail whereas those convicted in connection with large scale killings and rapes such as Babu Bajrangi and Maya Kodnani get repeated bail.

Last week, the Indian Parliament took another step towards medieval penology by passing the Juvenile Justice Bill providing for the possibility of treating as an adult a 16-year-old child - a result of mob demand for summary justice following the December 2012 gangrape in New Delhi - despite opposition from a large number of activists including feminists and feminist lawyers.

As 2015 ends, India remains firmly in the company of a minority of countries that swear by medieval practices. The current BJP-led government's proclivities are ante-diluvian. Human rights activists have their work cut out in mounting a robust opposition to this trend and to plead for leading the country in the direction of the majority of enlightened states that have ditched the death penalty and other cruel and inhuman punishments.

Last updated: December 31, 2015 | 16:53
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