Nirbhaya case brings focus back on death penalty

New Delhi, December 15

“The death penalty has no place in the 21st century.” The quote by UN Secretary General António Guterres seems convincing, but over 50 countries still allow capital punishment and gruesome crimes such as the Nirbhaya gang rape-and-murder case serve as a reminder that the issue of doing away with death penalty is not a settled one.

The 50 countries that still allow death penalty include India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, the US, Iran, Japan, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Iraq, Indonesia and the UAE, according to information in public domain.

The US-based Death Penalty Information Centre, a non-profit organisation, states that there are 146 countries that have totally abolished it in law and practice.

India executes criminals only in extreme cases and only 26 executions have taken place in India since 1991, the last being 1993 bomb blast case convict Yakub Memon in 2015. Before that, India had executed 2001 Parliament attack Afzal Guru.

Death penalty is in focus in India with a plea in the Supreme Court by one of the four death-row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-and-murder case, seeking review of the court’s 2017 judgment awarding him the capital punishment. A three-Judge Bench will hear the plea filed by convict Akshay Kumar Singh, whose lawyer has questioned in the review petition as to why give capital punishment at a time life is getting “short” due to rising pollution.

The apex court had on July 9 last year dismissed the review pleas filed by the three other convicts — Mukesh (30), Pawan Gupta (23) and Vinay Sharma (24) — in the case, saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.

However, rights organisations have vehemently opposed the death penalty, with the Amnesty International asserting that it is the “ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment”.

“Amnesty opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception – regardless of who is accused, the nature or circumstances of the crime, guilt or innocence or method of execution,” the rights body says on its website. According to Amnesty, China remains the world’s top executioner — but the true extent of the use of the death penalty in China is unknown as this data is classified as a state secret. — PTI