Indian courts awarded death penalty to over 2,000 in 15 years

The debate over capital punishment may be still going on, but the courts in India awarded death penalty to 2,052 individuals between 1998 and 2013, a report released on Thursday said.

Updated on: Jul 10, 2015, 09:14:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The debate over capital punishment may be still going on, but the courts in India awarded death penalty to 2,052 individuals between 1998 and 2013, a report released on Thursday said.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative said it meant 186 individuals were sent to gallows every year during the period. In the first 13 years of this century, the number was 1,0677.

“The maximum number of death sentences was in 2007 when courts across India punished 186 individuals. In 2000, 165 individuals received death sentences while 164 individuals received the punishment in 2005. The least was 55 in 1998,” the report, released in the wake of a consultation by the Law Commission on death penalty, said. The commission’s consultation paper said there was no spurt in crime between 2000 and 2013 when no person who received death penalty was hanged. The consultation is being held on directions of the Supreme Court which wanted an informed debate on this issue.

One-fourth of the death penalties awarded were in Uttar Pradesh, followed by Bihar (178) and Madhya Pradesh (162).

In 2013, Madhya Pradesh topped the list with 22 death sentences. Maharashtra took the fourth place followed by Tamil Nadu. Interestingly, in Karnataka, no death sentences were handed down between 1998 and 2013, the report said.

The report, based on National Crime Records Bureau data, said, “In Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur where the Armed Forces Special Powers Acts (AFSPA) is in force, the number of death sentences is lower,” the report said.

The period also saw death sentences of 4,497 persons commuted to life imprisonment by the courts.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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