New Delhi : If the 20th Law Commission’s recommendation is accepted by the government, then India could move a step forward towards abolition of the death penalty. The draft report of the commission chaired by Justice A P Shah now circulated among its members has backed the proposition that death penalty should be taken off the statute books and retained only for terror related cases.
After Yakub Menon’s hanging, there has been a sharply divided debate on the efficacy of death penalty. Two prominent politicians Varun Gandhi from the BJP and Shashi Tharoor from the Congress had opposed the provision of death penalty. Senior lawyers including MP Ram Jethamalani and Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi are among those who favour this punishment.
A lot of countries have already abolished this provision, but India is among the 59 countries in the world that retains it.
At the behest of the Supreme Court, the Law Commission had taken up this issue for examination last year. After wide-ranging consultations on the issue where majority of the participants, including representatives of some political parties, favoured abolition of the death penalty, it has: “The death penalty has no demonstrated utility in deterring crime or incapacitating offenders, any more than its alternative – imprisonment for life. The quest for retribution as a penal justification cannot descend into cries for vengeance.”
There is a possibility that the commission”s recommendation may not be unanimous and some members could express a different opinion. The commission”s term expires on August 31st and it could submit the report on Monday.
The existing law on death penalty is based on the Supreme Court’s doctrine that capital punishment should only be awarded in the ‘rarest of rare cases’ has come in for criticism in the commission’s report. It has said that the application of death penalty “continues to be excessive, arbitrary, unprincipled, judge-centric and prone to error”.