Supreme Court To Hear Plea On Abolishing Hanging As Mode Of Execution On January 21

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would hear arguments on January 21 on a plea seeking removal of the present mode of execution of death row convicts by hanging from the statute.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta was hearing a plea seeking abolition of the present practice of executing a death row convict by hanging and replacing it with less painful methods such as "intravenous lethal injection, shooting, electrocution or gas chamber".

Attorney General R Venkataramani requested the bench to keep the matter for hearing in January 2026.

"This has been hanging like hanging," senior advocate Rishi Malhotra, who had filed the petition in 2017, said.

Venkataramani said, "Nobody is going to be hanged now. There is no worry at all".

Malhotra said the Attorney General had earlier told the court that the Centre was considering the appointment of a committee to review the issues sought to be raised.

"I am told some proceedings have happened but I am not sure whether they have yielded any result. Let me pursue that matter and come and report to the court," Venkataramani said.

The bench posted the matter for hearing on January 21 next year.

While hearing the plea on October 15, the apex court said the problem is that the government is not ready to evolve.

The observation had come after the Centre said it may not be "very feasible" to give the option to death row convicts to choose lethal injection as a mode of execution.

Malhotra had said at least an option should be given to a condemned prisoner as to whether he wanted hanging or lethal injection as a mode of execution.

In March 2023, the apex court had said it may consider setting up a committee of experts to examine whether execution of death row convicts by hanging was proportionate and less painful and sought "better data" from the Centre on issues pertaining to the mode of execution.

The bench, however, had made clear that it cannot direct the legislature to adopt a particular mode of sentencing condemned convicts.

In 2018, the Centre strongly supported a legal provision that a death row convict would only be hanged to death and had told the bench that the other modes of execution like lethal injections and firing were not less painful.

The counter affidavit, filed by the joint secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, had said that death by hanging was "quick, simple" and free from anything that would "unnecessarily sharpen the poignancy of the prisoner".

The affidavit was filed in response to the PIL which referred to the 187th Report of the Law Commission advocating the removal of the present mode of execution from the statute.

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