Death penalty debate revived in India

Indian activists reacting outside the Delhi Saket court complex after the court handed death sentences to four men convicted in the fatal December gang-rape case in New Delhi yesterday.

By Siddhartha Kumar/New Delhi

“Hang the rapists - we want Justice,” demonstrators chanted after the fatal gang-rape of a student in Delhi in December, as political leaders, the victim’s family and activists called for the perpetrators to be executed.

Yesterday’s death sentences for the four men convicted may offer some closure to the family and to the millions who felt their outrage, but were sure to reignite the debate over capital punishment in India in general and for the crime of rape in particular.

Three months after the attack sparked the first nationwide protests, India toughened its laws on sexual crimes, introducing the death penalty for those whose victims died or were left in a vegetative state.

Young protesters outside the courts this week argued that only a mandatory death sentence for all rape convictions could tackle the rash of sexual assaults, while several politicians said capital punishment would instill a “fear of law” in would-be rapists.

But reports of violent sexual crimes appear to be on the rise, raising doubts as to the deterrent value of the new punishments.

There is no evidence to show that threat of execution gives violent criminals, including rapists, any pause for thought, said Yug Mohit Chaudhary, a Mumbai-based human rights lawyer.

Victims’ families should not be denied justice, but “the law cannot become an instrument of vengeance,” said Chaudhary, who leads the death penalty abolitionist movement in India.

Also, the occasional high-profile execution “deflects attention from other, more difficult, steps that the government needs to take” to tackle rape said Tara Rao, of human rights group Amnesty International.

These include “building a robust criminal justice system that acts as a more effective deterrent against sexual violence”, Rao said.

Rather than execute those rapists who are caught and convicted, the authorities should focus on the under-reporting and under-investigation that mean most never are, she said.

“Clearly the government must do a lot to better register, investigate and prosecute these crimes to ensure that nobody who commits a rape can get away with it.”

A high chance of some punishment would be a better deterrent than the low probability of a death sentence, she said.

Retired Supreme Court justice P B Sawant disagreed. “It is only the elite who are out of touch with the reality who say the death penalty is not a deterrent,” he said.

He also denied that capital punishment went against the principles of correction and reform. “At the Supreme Court we do not sentence anyone unless we know there are no effective steps can be taken for reform of the accused,” he said.

The issue comes as India is debating the death penalty more widely.

After an eight-year hiatus, the country resumed executions in late 2012, with the hangings of Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani militant involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and Mohamed Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri militant convicted of an 2001 attack on parliament.

A 1980 Supreme Court ruling said the death penalty was only to be applied in the “rarest of rare cases”. The conditions are not further defined, but it has since then been handed down for murder, fatal rapes, terrorism and abetting a child’s suicide.

More than 400 people were on death row at the end of 2012, according to Amnesty International.

President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected last-ditch mercy appeals by 17 convicts since taking office in July 2012. India this year also voted against a UN resolution banning executions.

Despite the outrage over recent high-profile sexual assaults, Indians on the whole do not seem to support capital punishment.

Around 40% of respondents to a recent nationwide survey said it should be abolished and life in prison was enough for the worst of crimes, according to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, while 30% disagreed.

Critics said the irreversible punishment is problematic in the context of India’s fallible legal system.

Last year, 14 former judges unsuccessfully petitioned the president to commute eight death sentences handed down between 1996 and 2009, arguing they were wrongly charged.

Studies show most convicts executed were illiterate, poor and therefore vulnerable, unable to afford good lawyers, Chaudhary said, adding hardly a single affluent person has ever gone to the gallows.

“Executions only feed the base instincts of retribution that will make our society more blood-thirsty and violent,” Chaudhary said.

“It will not contribute to our safety in any way. The question is what sort of world we want to leave behind for our children.” - DPA