DEATH BY ORDER

On April 23, the family of Sarabjit Singh, a death row convict lodged in Lahore jail, crossed over to Pakistan to seek clemency from the Government there. Sarabjit is accused of spying and killing 14 people through bomb blasts in 1990 and has been in a Pakistani jail for the last 18 years.

INDIA

The death sentence is handed out in India in consonance with the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab, that capital punishment could be awarded only in the "rarest of rare cases when the alternative option is unquestionably foreclosed."

Under Article 72 (1)(c) of the Indian Constitution, the President has the power to grant pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions or to suspend, remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence in all cases where the law provides for a death sentence. The Constitution provides similar powers to the Governor under Article 161. When the petition for clemency is pending before the President or the Governor, the execution of the death sentence stands suspended.

A high profile case was the execution of a former security guard Dhananjoy Chatterjee in Kolkata in August 2004, convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old schoolgirl.

Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, was handed the death sentence. Satwant Singh, Indira Gandhi’s assassin, and Kehar Singh, a conspirator in the crime, were also hanged.

On death row
Mohammad Afzal, or Afzal Guru, convicted of masterminding the attack on the Indian Parliament, is a prominent and controversial figure on death row. In 2005, the Supreme Court had upheld the sentence, but his mercy petition is still pending before the President of India.

MERCY PETITIONS
The mercy petitions of Perarivalan, Murugan and Shanthan, the three men sentenced to death in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and now lodged in jail, in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, are also pending. President K.R. Narayanan, following a plea by Sonia Gandhi, commuted the death sentence of Murugan’s wife Nalini to life term. There are also four associates of the sandalwood smuggler Veerappan in Belgaum jail, who are awaiting a decision on their mercy petitions, among several others

ELSEWHERE
Apart from India, US, Japan, Pakistan and South Korea are some of the democracies that still have the death penalty. Eighty-nine countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, another 10 for all but exceptional crimes, and another 30 are abolitionist in practice, having executed nobody for a decade.

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