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Fatal flaws in Indian death penalty verdicts: Amnesty International

J. Venkatesan

The only remedy: this punishment should go

New Delhi: Amnesty International India has sought the abolition of the death penalty in the country. Its study on India’s legal judgments has revealed that the “system is riddled with fatal flaws.”

Releasing the study report here on Friday, AI-India Director Mukul Sharma and People’s Union for Civil Liberties (Tamil Nadu and Puducherry) president V. Suresh said the only remedy to overcome the flaws was to abolish the death penalty completely.

“Amnesty International believes that at least 140 people were sentenced to death in India in 2006 and 2007. According to the latest available official figures, there were 273 persons on death row as of December, 31, 2005. But this figure is likely to be considerably higher today. The fate of these death row prisoners is ultimately a lottery.”

In the first comprehensive analysis of around 700 Supreme Court judgments over more than 50 years, the AI said the judicial system in India failed to meet international laws on the death penalty.

“The administration of the death penalty has not been in the “rarest of rare cases” as claimed in the country; on the contrary, there is ample evidence to show that the death penalty has been an arbitrary, imprecise and abusive means of dealing with defendants.”

Dr. Suresh said: “While the death penalty continues to be used in India, there remains a danger that it will be used disproportionately against ethnic minorities, the poor or other disadvantaged groups. There is only one way to ensure such inequalities in the administration of justice do not occur: the complete abolition of the death penalty.”

AI, however, welcomed the current hiatus of executions in the country.

“The relative lack of executions in the last decade — one in 2004 — illustrates that the people of India are willing to live without the death penalty. India stands at a crossroads.

“It can choose to join the global trend towards a moratorium on the death penalty, as adopted by the UN General Assembly last year. It will then join 27 countries in the Asia Pacific region which have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. Or it can continue to hang death row inmates, when the judicial system that puts them there has been shown by this extensive research to be unfair.”

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