“Death sentence on Death Sentence is an inviolable command of

compassionate culture and fundamental expression of social justice grandeur.

No civilized state shall have authority inflict death penalty even in the rarest of
rare cases, lest it be condemned as guilty of barbarity and devoid of humanity.
Universal respect for Human Rights commands absolute abolition of capital
punishment as no state, committed to social justice and human rights can
stultify or demolish the right to life of any life of any human being”
– V.R. Krishna Iyer,1 former Supreme Court Judge.
Hanged….what if he was innocent .......................................
Compassion for all living creatures (Article 51A) and human rights in its
spectral dimensions, including the right to reform oneself out of a diabolic past,
if any (Article 21), are great constitutional values spelt out in Sunil Batra (AIR
1978 SC) and Maru Ram (1981 SCC) and a number of other refined rulings of
the Supreme Court. We have accepted in our Buddha-Gandhi country the
reformatory theory of criminal jurisprudence and impliedly departed from the
retributive theory which once prevailed with a savage imperial flavour.
Independence heralded Social Justice commitment and the State’s profound
reverence for human life however malignant by culpable conduct it may be.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the general ethos of the United
Nations contradict the unconscionable punitivity of ‘an eye for an eye’. From
Macaulay, who drafted the Indian Penal Code, to Mahatma Gandhi, the Father
of the Nation, who stood unexceptionably against death penalty, there has
been a benignant value shift. The Amnesty International has, for long, been
carrying on an uncompromising campaign against this appalling penal
inhumanity practiced as death sentence. The United Nations is seriously
concerned with this sentencing terror. In this context I have addressed an
epistolary appeal to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. We, the People of
India, using its Sovereign Constitutional Power, must abolish Death Sentence
as the United Kingdom and a large majority of nations have already done. The
State cannot sanction murder by hanging or otherwise and justify this shocking
violence on the score of reprisal against the brutality of private butchers.
Sanguinary atrocity by a non-state agency is no paradigm at all to justify
burking the offender based on the blood-thirsty retributive justice
commandment. ‘Thou Shall Not Kill’ is the cultural quintessence and spiritual
majesty of our Republic’s justice system.
India, with its heritage of Gautama Buddha, and Mahatma Gandhi, has stood
for a culture of compassion for living creatures (now constitutionalised in
Article 51A). Therefore, there is a moral mandate that no one shall be deprived
of life by the State as it savages humanity and sanctifies barbarity. Between
Macaulay, whose country even publicly hanged pick-pockets, and the Mahatma,
who sublimely astonished the world with indefeasible nonviolence, there has
been a phenomenal transformation in global criminological values and in the
vision of our nation. This glorious Gandhianisation persuaded me to
conscientise punitive justice in two Supreme Court rulings where my opinion
prevailed. .
The Supreme Court of California has acknowledged in two cases the cruel and
degrading effect of dalay: People V. Chessman (34 P. 2d 679 (1959) at page
699) and People V. Anderson (493 P.2d 880, 894 (1972). In the latter case the
Court expressly mentioned the dehumanising effects of lengthy imprisonment
prior to execution. Justice Krishna Iyer of the Indian Supreme Court has
expressed a similar view, when the delay after sentence was six years. They
were Edigma Annamma (1974) 4 SCC 443) and Rajendra Prasad (1979) (3
SCC 646), which were cited with approval by the great judge Lord Scarman in
a Privy Council case (vide Supreme Court On Criminal Law, p.1465) WAY back
in 1976 (?) I was invited by Amnesty International to speak at the inaugural of
a seminar against death penalty held in Stockholm. I made an emphatic
demand at that conference for the absolute abolition of death sentence, a plea
which was firmly shared by Olaf Palme (?) who was the then Prime Minister of
Sweden. I have always stood for clemency for death sentencees on the theory
that every person, even if he has committed murder ‘most foul’, must be given
an opportunity to reform himself. Retributive justice, based on an eye for an
eye, makes the whole world blind, as Mahatma Gandhi powerfully put it. The
State cannot kill, even if a private murderer is found guilty of terrible killing.
Refined jurists have supported this humanising process which I described in
one of my judgments as Operation Valmiki. Valmiki was a forest robber who
went to the extent of even murder, but when he was chastened by a saintly
message he proved to be one of the noblest souls in the cosmos who
composed the Ramayana and is regarded as perhaps the greatest epic poet in
Sanskrit. It will be the grandest event of our century if, as a universal rule,
death penalty is abolished.Indeed, a momentum is gathering to end capital
punishment in all countries. 130 nations, from all regions of the world, have
abolished the death penalty in law or in practice and only 25 countries carried
out executions in 2006. Amnesty International (AI)’s statistics also show a
significant, overall decline in the number of reported executions in 2006.
(Excerpts from a statement by Amnesty International)
Death sentence on Death Sentence is an inviolable command of compassionate
culture and fundamental expression of social justice grandeur. No civilised
state shall have authority to inflict death penalty even in the rarest of rare
cases, lest it be condemned as guilty of barbarity and devoid of humanity.
Universal respect for Human Rights commands absolute abolition of capital
punishment as no state, committed to social justice and human rights can
stultify or demolish the right to life of any human being.
Before I conclude this militant plea against death sentence I must place on
record an extraordinary piece of information hardly known to the outside
world. The late Nikhil Chakravartty, while inaugurating at Trivandrum my
campaign as the presidential candidate some years ago, stated what is rarely
written about President Radhakrishnan. Nehru was the Prime Minister and
Radhakrishnan, the President. Death warrants, before actual execution, had to
be signed by the President. It would appear that Dr Radhakrishnan, our great
philosopher and humanist, did not believe in death sentence and did not sign
death warrants because they were against his conviction. When these
instances multiplied, Nehru, the Prime Minister, sent a special official to convey
his wish that the President may be pleased not to delay signing death
warrants. DrRadhakrishnan, the rarest of the rare Presidents, told this high
official, who had come from the Prime Minister: please tell the Prime Minister
that he had better wait for the next President to sign.