Capital Punishment

India is a land where people like BUDDHA and Gandhi are born, a country where
MOTHER TERESA lived. It is a place where peace and non violence was spread to
the world. In such a country the law has provision for death penalty which is
unacceptable. We should follow Reformative justice not Retributive justice. Law
was made by the people to safeguard the people, but not to kill the people in name
of law. Law of nature and humanity prevails over everything. Only nature should
take away life from this earth, any other way is murder. We don’t want a society or
law which takes away the natural right of the person to live. As MAHATMA
GANDHI said, “EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND.”
The architect of the Constitution, Baba Saheb Ambedkar, admitted in the Constituent
Assembly that people may not follow non-violence in practice but they certainly
adhere to the principle of non-violence as a moral mandate which they ought to
observe as far as they possibly can. With this in mind he said, “the proper thing for
this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether.”
Miscarriage of justice is, in fact, one of the biggest concerns about the death penalty.
Is it possible that someone could be wrongly hanged in 21st century India? The
answer, unfortunately, is yes. Studies conducted by Amnesty International and the
People’s Union for Civil Liberties have shown that the process of deciding who
should be on death row is arbitrary and biased. The Supreme Court has itself
admitted on several occasions that there is confusion and contradiction in the
application of the death penalty.
Some argue that the death penalty is the only way to deter heinous crime, especially
violence against women and children. But a comprehensive study done last year in
the United States found that there is no credible evidence that the death penalty has
any deterrent effect on crime.
The vociferous opposition to the abolition of death penalty stems from the myth that
it will lead to an increase in the number of murders. The facts are otherwise. In the
State of Travancore, there were 962 murders between 1945 and 1950 when the death
penalty was not in force; but in the five years from 1950 when it was re-imposed,
there were 967 murders.
The “Innocence Project” in the United States [a national litigation and public policy
organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through
DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system] has found, on the other hand,
several cases where innocent people were given the death sentence. Lawmakers in
India find it convenient to hold up the death penalty as a symbol of their resolve to
tackle crime, and choose to ignore more difficult but more effective solutions like
social education and police or judicial reform. The certainty of punishment, not
severity, is the real deterrent.
Rajiv Gandhi case
The death penalty is little more than judicially sanctioned murder. Justice K.T.
Thomas, who headed the three member bench in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination
case, has said that executing Perarivalan, Murugan and Santhan, convicted and
sentenced to death in the case, would amount to punishing them twice for the same
offence, as they had already spent 22 years in jail, the equivalent of
life imprisonment.
In the case of Bachan Singh v State of Punjab, Justice Bhagwati alone dissented in
this case. According to him “Unfettered and uncharted discretion conferred on any
authority, even if it be the judiciary, throws the door open for arbitrariness, for after
all a judge does not cease to be a human being subject to human limitations when he
puts on the judicial robe and the nature of the judicial process being what it is, it
cannot be entirely free from judicial subjectivism.” And this very principle he
believed clearly violates Article 14 which guarantees equality before law. Also it
violates Article 19 and 21 as there are no procedural as to when the state has the
power to take away the life and personal liberties of a person in such cases. Justice
Bhagwati not only talks about the brutality and indiscretion that accompanies death
penalty but also with logic and statistical data shows us how capital punishment
doesn’t succeed in attaining any of the three penological goals( Reformation,
retribution and deterrence). It is obviously impossible to reform a person who is dead
and the retribution theory also does not hold ground according to him such a
punishment is based purely on emotions of vengeance and revenge which should be
curtailed in a civilised society. Last is the Deterrence theory, which most
retentionists assume is the most crucial reason for not abolishing capital punishment.
They believe that legally sanctioned death of the culprit would dissuade others from
doing the same.
India is such a country where Active Euthanasia is illegal. One person cannot take
his own life when he is in immense pain and there is no meaning of his life. In such
a stage a person is not allowed to quit his life, so how come the death penalty is
right?
In Conclusion, The world is moving away from using the death penalty. The
European Union has made “abolition of death penalty” a prerequisite for
membership. The 65th United Nations General Assembly voted in December 2010,
for the third time, in favour of abolishing the death penalty and called for a global
moratorium on executions. Amnesty International reports that 140 countries — more
than two-thirds of the world — do not use the death penalty any more. India needs
to recognise this global trend, and act in step with it.