Published: July 27, 2004 

Times of India

Ravi Nair , Human Rights activist: Yes. It rarely acts as a deterrent. And what if the person is innocent?

The debate has been an ongoing one. The last time the Lok Sabha specifically discussed the question was in 1983. Then prime minister Indira Gandhi had stated that she favoured abolition of death penalty.

But her minister of state for home affairs, N R Laskar announced that the government was not considering any concrete proposal to abolish it.

The debate was revived when all 26 defendants in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case were sentenced to death. It also came up in the wake of rather reckless proposals on extending the death penalty to those dealing in spurious drugs and to those convicted for rape.

There are several reasons why the death penalty should be abolished. First, it reinforces the idea of retributive justice, a mediaeval concept that must have no place in a civilised society.

It is argued that a person who has committed a heinous crime such as murder must be likewise deprived of life. Does this mean that a rapist should be raped, or that a torturer should be tortured?

Second, it has no deterrent value: its use has not been shown to have brought about a significant decrease in crime. It is the certainty of punishment that has the effect of deterring crime, not the quantum of punishment.

Third, it is irrevocable; once done it cannot be undone. This is crucial when you consider that recent developments such as the use of DNA testing have shown previously convicted persons as having been innocent.

The last person to have been executed in the UK was, years later, found to be innocent. According to data maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union, between 1973 and 2003, 110 death row inmates in 25 states in the US were found to be innocent and released from death row.

The Indian government does not make execution records available in the public domain. Also, life imprisonment does not necessarily mean 14 years.

The Supreme Court has laid down that life imprisonment means imprisonment for the whole of the remaining period of the convict's life unless the government passes conscious orders remitting or commuting the sentence. Fourteen years is the minimum.

Although the imposition of the death penalty is supposed to conform to the 'rarest of rare' standard, it can be imposed in cases ranging from murder to narcotic offences to kidnapping for ransom.

The regularity of its imposition also indicates that it is not considered an exceptional measure. Finally, capital punishment militates aga-inst the progressive international trend towards abolition.

The 'rarest of rare' standard should only be an intermediate step to abolition. But India has maintained the doctrine for more than two decades now.

(Nair is director, South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre)