New Delhi: Even as the Supreme Court called for reforming death penalty sentencing, the year 2022 saw 165 death sentences handed out by trial courts – the highest in over two decades. Though the figure was inflated by the “unprecedented” imposition of the death penalty on 38 people in an Ahmedabad bomb blast case, sexual offences continue to constitute a majority of cases in which capital punishment was imposed in 2022.
These statistics were brought out by the annual “Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics 2022” report of Project 39A of National Law University (NLU) Delhi. The project is inspired by Article 39A of the Indian constitution, which says the state should further “the intertwined values of equal justice and equal opportunity by removing economic and social barriers”.
The report noted that 2022 represents a “historic moment” in death penalty jurisprudence because the Supreme Court, under the tenure of then Chief Justice of India U.U. Lalit, has moved to reconsider the death penalty sentencing framework for the first time since 1980. “Through a suo motu writ, the Supreme Court specifically highlighted the lack of uniformity in the death penalty sentencing framework and referred issues in death penalty sentencing to a Constitution Bench towards ensuring ‘real, effective and meaningful’ sentencing hearing for a convict,” the report says.
The top court in 2022 also pronounced a significant judgment in Manoj vs State of Madhya Pradesh, in which it emphasised on the “duty of the trial courts to elicit materials on mitigating circumstances”. The Project 39A report says that this decision “recognised the absence of a coherent legal and institutional framework for the collection and presentation of mitigating circumstances”.
Also Read | Pulled in All Directions: Death Penalty Jurisprudence in the Last Year
Among the 165 death sentences handed out in 2022, 51.28% of cases involved crimes related to sexual violence. The report said that in 98.3% of death penalties imposed by trial courts in 2022, there was no material on mitigating circumstances of the accused and did not have any state-led evidence on the question of reform.
“At the end of 2022, 539 prisoners were on death row, the highest number of prisoners on death row since the first Annual Statistics Report published in 2016. The population on death row has steadily increased over the years, with 2022 representing a 40% increase in the population since 2015,” the report says.
The increase is not only because of the large number of death sentences imposed by trial courts but also “the accompanying low rate of disposal of death penalty cases by appellate courts”. In 2022, high courts across India decided 68 matters, while the Supreme Court decided 11 matters.
Among the cases decided by the top court, it acquitted 5 prisoners in 3 cases, commuted the death sentences of 8 prisoners in 6 cases and confirmed the death sentences of 2 prisoners in 2 cases. The Project 39A report said:
“The decisions commuting the death sentences introduced important changes in the framework of death penalty sentencing as well as in post-mercy adjudication. The acquittal orders noted the abysmal investigative processes, lack of fair investigation, and the lack of consideration of procedural failures by the Sessions courts in these cases. The cases that confirmed the death penalty significantly diverged from the commutations in the approach to mitigation and death penalty sentencing more generally.”
According to Anup Surendranath, an NLU law professor and the executive director of Project 39A, the rise in the use of death penalty has occurred post-pandemic. “Trial courts have resumed imposing a high number of death sentences since the dip in 2020 due to the pandemic (which was the lowest at 77),” he told the Times of India.
He said that there seems to be an “ever-widening gap” between the SC’s guidance on handing out death penalties and the trial courts’ “blatant disregard for procedural guarantees”, which has been “repeatedly established” in research by Project 39A.