The present condition in India is such that one
should support the abolishing of capital punishment in all cases, except for cases
in which public conscience and national security is at stake. Crimes such as
treason, rape and mutiny tend to create public outrage in the society. The
Supreme Court in its landmark judgment and the legislature in amending the Code
of Criminal Procedure in 1976 made it clear that death sentence would be
prescribed only in rarest of the rare case.
Capital punishment has many problems. First
being its unconstitutional nature as it violates Article 21 of the
Constitution- Right to Life and Liberty. It was in the case of Maneka Gandhi
where the court held that citizens and non-citizens are protected against
arbitrary actions of executive as well as legislature, therefore making capital
punishment inhumane and unconstitutional. Capital punishment has never achieved
the desired deterrence effect. Law Commission of India in its 262 report
provided statistics, which showed that capital punishment deterrent value is no
greater than life imprisonment, claiming that it may even stand on the same
footing. Main aim of deterrence has been to make the offender realise the wrong
committed by him. In cases of capital punishment offender is never given a
chance to realise his sins but only given punishment. It is proven that most
fearful punishment will provide greater deterrence but still in our country
there has been no decrease in crime rates where capital punishment is sentenced
for the offence.
Another problem that needs to be highlighted is
its execution process. Under Article 21, the government can deprive a person of
his life and liberty only through due process of law which means that the
process needs to be just, fair and reasonable. According to Article 72 of the Constitution, convict can plea for
mercy to the President, and under Article 161 of the Constitution, convict can
plea for mercy to the respective state governor but there is no stipulated time under which the governor or
president can answer the plea. These laws sometimes lead to inordinate delay,
therefore infringing the rights of the accused. Such process of law does not
satisfy the standards of reasonableness or fairness. In the case of Shatrughan
Chauhan, the court sentenced 14 accused to death but because of delay in
execution of the sentence, the court held that delay in execution process has dehumanising
effect on the convicts. From 2006-2013, India was said to be capital punishment
free country, but the fact was around 100 cases were sentenced to death but has
not yet been executed. If the execution process is unconstitutional, then sure
the desired goal of deterrence cannot be achieved through capital punishment.
Under our
Constitution, maintenance of peace, order and safety in the society is one of
the crucial functions of the government. Therefore it is important for the
government to sentence capital punishment in such heinous crimes in which large
scale public conscience is at risk because these types of crimes are capable of
producing vast public outrage. Therefore i am of the opinion that capital
punishment should be abolished from our legal system but except for cases in
which peace, order and safety of society is largely and gravely at risk.
"The following article is written by Rohit Bohra, a 3rd year law student of Jindal Global Law School."
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