Download Download PDF. Translate PDF. Table of Contents 1. Cases Referred…………. List of Abbreviations………………………………………………………………….. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………3 4. History and Indian Legislations…………………………………………………… Constitutional Validity of Death Penalty……. Arguments in Favour of Abolition of Capital Punishment……………. Arguments in Favour of Retention of Capital Punishment………………. Mithu v. State of Punjab 2. State of Tamil Nadu v. Jagmohan Singh v.
State of UP 4. Rajendra Prasad v. State of UP 5. Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab 6. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India 7. Attorney General of India v.
Lachmi Devi 8. Triveniben v. State of Gujarat 9. Ediga Anamma v. State of Andhra Pradesh Narotam Singh v. State of Punjab State of Gujarat Mahesh v. State of M. Edition Vol. While the protagonists of death sentence claim that it must be awarded to the most heinous of crimes, the persons who advocate human rights are dead against the notion of the continuance of death penalty as they allege it to be in violation of the basic human rights of an individual.
This paper will go on to elucidate the reasons as to why the existence of death penalty is material to achieving justice in the State. Before delving into an explanation of the reasons for the continuance of death penalty, it is first vital to note the meaning of death sentence, its connotations, and when it can be awarded with respect to the present times. First, death penalty is the sentence, which legally terminates the natural life of a person. Second, as according to Indian law, death penalty is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases.
This indicates that death penalty is given only for the most heinous of crimes. State of Tamil Nadu the Court reiterated that the death sentence could be invoked in the rarest of rare cases. In the ancient times the death penalty usually involved beheading the person was awarded by the King for the explicit non — compliance of by any person of any command issued by the King or the non — compliance with any moral obligation imposed upon that person.
It was later incorporated into the Indian Penal Code, , leading to its legal incorporation and has been in legal existence in India, ever since.
In the 20th century, there was a movement for the abolition of death penalty, which lead to many States complying with the movement and going ahead to abolish death penalty. However, in India the death penalty has continued to exist.
This has opened the ground for great discussion and debate, with the human right activists coming out with strong reasons for the abolition of death penalty. After independence, a bill was introduced in the Lok-Sabha in , to abolish the capital punishment which was rejected by the house. Efforts made in the Rajya-Sabha in and in were also fruitless. Crimes against persons: a murder; b murder by life-convict3; c abatement of suicide of child or insane person; d attempt to murder by a life-convict causing hurt; e dacoity with murder.
Giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction of capital offence. It regards life convicts to be dangerous class without any scientific basis and thus violates Article 14 and similarly by completely cutting out judicial discretion, it becomes a law which is not just, fair and reasonable within the meaning of Article Crimes against Government of India: a waging, or attempting to wage war against state of India; b abetment of mutiny.
Besides this, the Code of Criminal Procedure, provides some important provisions regarding the procedure of awarding the capital punishment. The Code of Criminal Procedure, before , obliged the court to pass capital punishment for murder as a general proposition and the alternative sentence could be awarded only in exceptional cases for which the court was then required to advance special reasons. After , there was a complete reversal to this approach.
Thereafter, life imprisonment was made the normal sentence for murder and death penalty was allowed to be passed only in exceptionally cases. The Law Commission of India, after making an intensive and extensive study of the subject of death penalty in India, published and submitted its 36th Report in to the Government. No single argument for abolition or retention can decide the issue. In arriving at any conclusion on the subject, the need for protecting society in general and individual human beings must be borne in mind.
It is difficult to rule out the validity of the strength behind many of the arguments for abolition nor does the Commission treat lightly the argument based on the irrevocability of the sentence of death, the need for a modern approach, the severity of capital punishment and the strong feeling shown by certain sections of public opinion in stressing deeper questions of human values. Having regard, however, to the conditions in India, to the variety of the social upbringing of its inhabitants, to the disparity in the level of morality and education in the country, to the vastness of its area, to diversity of its population and to the paramount need for maintaining law and order in the country at the present juncture, India cannot risk the experiment of abolition of capital punishment.
In Jagmohan Singh v. The Supreme Court rejected the contention and held that death penalty cannot be regarded unreasonable per se or not in the public interest and hence could not be said to be violative of Article 19 of the Constitution.
State of UP7 empathetically stressed that death penalty is violative of articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. A year later in the landmark case of Bachan Singh v.
State of Punjab8, by a majority of 4 to 1 Bhagwati, J. Therefore, the state may take away or abridge even right to life in the name of law and public order following the procedure established by law. Union of India9. The procedure which takes away the sacrosanct life of a human being must be just, fair and reasonable. So, fair trial following principles of natural justice and procedural Laws are of utmost importance when capital punishment is on the statute book.
Lachmi Devi10 that the mode of carrying out death penalty by public hanging is barbaric and violative of Art. State of Gujarat. State of Andhra Pradesh12 which followed Justice Krishna Iyer commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment by citing factors like age, gender, socio-economic background and psychic compulsions of the accused.
It was laid out in this case that apart from looking into the details of the crime and deciding based on the extent of violence committed the judges should also look into the criminal and his condition or haplessness while committing the crime. Thus, India was now committed to progressive abolition of death penalty. These are in brief some of the landmark cases which grappled with the question of death penalty and other issues stemming from it.
Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Need an account? Click here to sign up. Download Free PDF. Kas Saghafi. A short summary of this paper. Download Download PDF. Translate PDF.
The death penalty—the hyphen linking the theological and the political— guarantees the alliance between religion and the state. Belief in God, he claims, allows two apparently opposed interpretations concerning the death penalty to be held together. DOI: This problematic role of philosophy and philosophers in relation to the death penalty is further explored in the Death Penalty Seminars.
Thus, as Thomas Dutoit points out, philosophy begins with resignation, with the acceptance of the verdict of the death penalty. With Socrates left to his own devices by his daimon and Derrida gently cajoled by his angel, we witness two visions of philosophy: one tolerant of, if not resigned to, the existence of the death penalty; the other urged to consider the challenge issued by the death penalty, to its conceptualization of death, if not to its very self-identity.
In Session Nine, Derrida speaks of seeing a kind of angel pass very quickly before him, who whispers to him while smiling and challenging him that the dream of deconstruction is to deconstruct death itself. Neither life nor death, Derrida tells us, will escape this deconstruction unscathed DP1, 9. In his startling yet understated, almost unassuming, analysis in Session Ten, Derrida underscores and spells out what he had already detailed in Aporias If death is to be subjected to a deconstruction, what would such a decon- struction involve?
It would seem to entail at least two major consequences. First, perhaps it would start with the question of the death penalty a question viewed by the tradition as a dependent, secondary one in order to ask then the question of death in general DP1, 9. The question or the theme of the death penalty would displace the central importance accorded to death by the entire Western philosophical tradition.
We now would be able to add the death penalty to the list of terms that can act as a lever in the deconstruction of the theologico-political. In fact, it is the promise itself that lets come or makes come.
0コメント