In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court said that trial judges should not be swayed in favour of death penalty merely because of the dreadful nature of the crime. They should equally consider the mitigating factors in favour of life imprisonment.
- The judgment by a three-judge Bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar came in the rape and murder of a seven-year-old. The Supreme Court commuted the death penalty of the convict to life imprisonment.
- Justice Dinesh Maheshwari, who authored the judgment, while referring to the evolution of the principles of penology, said penology had grown to accommodate the philosophy of “preservation of human life”.
- He said the principles of penology have “evolved to balance the other obligations of the society, i.e., of preserving the human life, be it of accused, unless termination thereof is inevitable and is to serve the other societal causes and collective conscience of society”.
Capital punishment in India
- India is one of only 58 countries that have the death penalty on their statute book and have used it in the recent past.
- As per Project 39A of the National Law University, Delhi, India has executed around 755 persons since Independence. Its report said that Uttar Pradesh carried out the highest number of executions at 366.
- Also, the Bareilly District Jail in the State has the distinction of carrying out 130 executions, the highest of all jails in the country, with the last execution being carried out on September 24, 1988.
- In 1980, in Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab, the Supreme Court developed a framework for sentences in cases that involved the death
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