Capital punishment to Nirbhaya rapists revives death penalty debate

With the awarding of the death penalty to the four convicts in the December 12 gangrape case, the debate surrounding the capital punishment has seen a revive. The four convicts, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh, on the death row, will now have the legal vehicles of a review petition, a curative petition, an appeal to the governor, and then finally, an appeal to the president between them and the gallows.

The Supreme Court, in its judgement, observed that this was "rarest of the rare" case. "If at all there is a case warranting award of death sentence, it is the present case. If the dreadfulness displayed by the accused in committing the gang-rape, unnatural sex, insertion of iron rod in the private parts of the victim does not fall in the 'rarest of rare category', then one may wonder what else would fall in that category," read the judgement.

Soon after the judgement was announced, international human rights organisation Amnesty International released a statement opposing the sentence. The rights body said that it opposes the death penalty on principle as it is "the ultimate violation to the right to life."

"There is no evidence that the death penalty is a particular deterrent to crime. Even the Justice Verma Committee opposed imposing the death penalty in cases of violence against women," said Gopika Bashi, Amnesty International India's senior campaigner for women's rights.

Amnesty India's 2016 report on death penalty revealed that 136 death sentences were awarded in India in 2016, a significant rise from the earlier years, with over 400 people in India were under a death sentence by the end the year. Another report, by the Centre for Death Penalty by the National Law University, revealed that with 79 death sentences, Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of death sentences, followed by Bihar (53) and Karnataka (45).

Of these, 270 cases were pending in the High Court and 52 cases were pending in the Supreme Court. There are 30 cases awaiting a mercy petition, while in 21 cases the mercy petition was rejected. Last week, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Nagpur-based Vasant Dupare who was awarded the capital punishment for raping and murdering a four-year-old girl.

The Justice Verma Committee, formed in the aftermath of the December 16 case to review the rape laws in India, submitted in their report that the death penalty would be "a regressive step in the field of sentencing and reformation." The Law Commission, too, in a 2015 report recommended that, except for cases of terrorism, India should strive to do away with the capital punishment. The reason cited by the Commission were that the death penalty is hardly a deterrent, and that mercy petitions in India are plagued by long waiting periods. On Thursday, at the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review, over a dozen countries including Israel, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Turkey, Switzerland and Belgium recommended India to abolish the death penalty.

...& ANALYSIS

• Amnesty India’s 2016 report on death penalty revealed that 136 death sentences were awarded in India in 2016
   
• As per a NLU, Delhi study 270 cases were pending in HC and 52 in SC. 30 cases are in mercy petition, while another 21 were rejected