Convicts awaiting the gallows gained new hope on Tuesday as the Supreme Court commuted the death sentences of three people involved in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination conspiracy to life, citing an 11-year delay by the President in deciding their mercy petitions. Describing the time lag as “inordinate and unreasonable”, the court appealed to the government to consider such gaps among the yardsticks it applies when executing convicts.
Mercy petitions “can be disposed of at a much faster pace than what is adopted now”, the court said, requesting the government to “render its advice to the President within a reasonable time” in order to “repose the confidence of the people in the institution of democracy”.
Murugan, Santhan and Arivu, who were convicted in the plot that killed the former prime minister, have been in jail since 1991. The Supreme Court confirmed their death sentences in 2000. Though their mercy petitions were forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs in May 2000, the department took five years to submit the papers to the President for consideration. “Ultimately, the President, on September 12, 2011, rejected these mercy petitions after a delay of more than 11 years,” the court said.
This verdict follows a judgment by the Supreme Court on January 22 commuting the sentences of 15 prisoners awaiting execution, on the ground that the president had delayed the review of their mercy petitions for too long. Some of them had been waiting for over 20 years, and one developed schizophrenia during this period.
While human rights campaigners welcomed Tuesday’s judgment, they urged the government to set a clear policy to move towards abolishing the death penalty.
“The positive rulings of commutations of January 2014 and those of today, offer context and impetus for India to move towards a direction of a society that can be free of the death penalty", said Divya Iyer, a senior researcher at Amnesty International India. "India must now do away with the death penalty – a cruel, inconsistent and irreversible form of punishment that has no proven deterrent effect on crime.”
Added Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, “The Supreme Court has made an important ruling in this case. However, our judiciary cannot alter the law. It is for the government to announce an official moratorium and for the parliament to then work towards abolishing the death penalty altogether.”
India has been increasingly reluctant to execute prisoners on death row over the past 30 years. However, it has done this unofficially by delaying the review of clemency petitions by the President – to the point that some prisoners waited for two decades in limbo between life and death. Prisoners on death row have filed over 300 mercy petitions since 1950, most of which the government has accepted and commuted into life sentences.
Justice P Sathasivan, who presided over yesterday's case and the one on January 22, was weighing in on the validity of petitions that have been delayed for over a decade. His judgment requests the government to hasten the process for the remaining 18 petitions pending with the President, the earliest of which was filed in 1999.
The number of death convictions in India since Independence is difficult to establish. According to research by the Asian Center for Human Rights, there was an average of 130 executions per year during the period between 1953 and 1963. The number of executions then dropped sharply after 1995. In many years, no executions were carried out.
In 1983, the Supreme Court laid out clear guidelines for the "rarest of rare" circumstances under which a death penalty could be awarded, although this does not seem to have been followed very diligently. The figures above are in stark contrast to the number of death penalties awarded by lower courts: 1,455 since 2001, with an average of 132 such sentences every year.
While the gap between 1963 and 1995 in the chart above is due to a lack of data, the gaps between subsequent years (1999 to 2003, and 2005 to 2011) indicate no executions took place in those years.
"The fallout of this [judgment] should not be that the government then decides that it must execute people," concluded Ganguly. "An option for clemency should remain but announcing an official moratorium will end the uncertainty for those on death row."
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Mercy petitions “can be disposed of at a much faster pace than what is adopted now”, the court said, requesting the government to “render its advice to the President within a reasonable time” in order to “repose the confidence of the people in the institution of democracy”.
Murugan, Santhan and Arivu, who were convicted in the plot that killed the former prime minister, have been in jail since 1991. The Supreme Court confirmed their death sentences in 2000. Though their mercy petitions were forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs in May 2000, the department took five years to submit the papers to the President for consideration. “Ultimately, the President, on September 12, 2011, rejected these mercy petitions after a delay of more than 11 years,” the court said.
This verdict follows a judgment by the Supreme Court on January 22 commuting the sentences of 15 prisoners awaiting execution, on the ground that the president had delayed the review of their mercy petitions for too long. Some of them had been waiting for over 20 years, and one developed schizophrenia during this period.
While human rights campaigners welcomed Tuesday’s judgment, they urged the government to set a clear policy to move towards abolishing the death penalty.
“The positive rulings of commutations of January 2014 and those of today, offer context and impetus for India to move towards a direction of a society that can be free of the death penalty", said Divya Iyer, a senior researcher at Amnesty International India. "India must now do away with the death penalty – a cruel, inconsistent and irreversible form of punishment that has no proven deterrent effect on crime.”
Added Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, “The Supreme Court has made an important ruling in this case. However, our judiciary cannot alter the law. It is for the government to announce an official moratorium and for the parliament to then work towards abolishing the death penalty altogether.”
India has been increasingly reluctant to execute prisoners on death row over the past 30 years. However, it has done this unofficially by delaying the review of clemency petitions by the President – to the point that some prisoners waited for two decades in limbo between life and death. Prisoners on death row have filed over 300 mercy petitions since 1950, most of which the government has accepted and commuted into life sentences.
Justice P Sathasivan, who presided over yesterday's case and the one on January 22, was weighing in on the validity of petitions that have been delayed for over a decade. His judgment requests the government to hasten the process for the remaining 18 petitions pending with the President, the earliest of which was filed in 1999.
The number of death convictions in India since Independence is difficult to establish. According to research by the Asian Center for Human Rights, there was an average of 130 executions per year during the period between 1953 and 1963. The number of executions then dropped sharply after 1995. In many years, no executions were carried out.
In 1983, the Supreme Court laid out clear guidelines for the "rarest of rare" circumstances under which a death penalty could be awarded, although this does not seem to have been followed very diligently. The figures above are in stark contrast to the number of death penalties awarded by lower courts: 1,455 since 2001, with an average of 132 such sentences every year.
While the gap between 1963 and 1995 in the chart above is due to a lack of data, the gaps between subsequent years (1999 to 2003, and 2005 to 2011) indicate no executions took place in those years.
"The fallout of this [judgment] should not be that the government then decides that it must execute people," concluded Ganguly. "An option for clemency should remain but announcing an official moratorium will end the uncertainty for those on death row."
