A petition in the Supreme Court has asked the court to do away with the practice of hanging death row convicts. The petition suggests that methods such as shooting or lethal injection be used instead.
The dormant debate on doing away with the practice of hanging death row convicts has revived momentum thanks to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in the Supreme Court.
Petitioner Rishi Malhotra, a Supreme Court advocate, has sought abolition of the present practice of hanging and suggested alternative methods such as intravenous lethal injection or shooting.
Holding that hanging involved prolonged pain and suffering compared to the other two suggested procedures, Malhotra quoted earlier judgments of the Supreme Court and recommendations of the Law Commission to bolster his case.
The petition said in Gian Kaur vs State of Punjab (1996), the Supreme Court had held that "the right to life, including the right to live with human dignity, would mean the existence of such a right up to the end of natural life. This also includes the right to a dignified life up to the point of death, including a dignified procedure of death. In other words, this may include the right of a dying man to also die with dignity when his life is ebbing out."
Drawing a comparison, the petition said while in hanging the entire execution process takes more than 40 minutes to declare a prisoner to be dead, the shooting process involves not more than a few minutes. In case of intravenous lethal injection, it's all over in 5 minutes.
Malhotra said the Law Commission's view was that developed as well as developing countries have replaced the execution by hanging with intravenous lethal injection or shooting, "which is most acceptable and humane method of executing death sentence involving less pain and suffering to a condemned prisoner".
EARLIER PRECEDENTS
Drawing attention to another SC judgment, Deena vs Union of India, Malhotra said in that case it was said the act of execution should be as quick and as simple as possible and free from anything that unnecessarily sharpens the poignancy of the prisoner's apprehension.
"The act of the execution should produce immediate unconsciousness passing quickly into the death, should be decent and should not involve mutilation," the SC had said.
Malhotra argued that the law panel in 1967 in its 35th Report had also noted the fact that most of the countries has either adopted electrocution, firing squad or gas chamber as a substitute for hanging.
He wants the Supreme Court to declare Section 354(5) of Criminal Procedure, which says "when any person is sentenced to death, the sentence shall direct that he be hanged by the neck till he is dead", declared violative of the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution.
He also wants that the right to die by a dignified procedure of death should be declared a fundamental right.
"Shooting and injecting with lethal poison necessarily involves lesser agony compared to hanging, which involves a torturous procedure of weighing the convict, measuring the height, etc. in order to determine the length of the drop," Malhotra said.
The lawyer argues that the execution as contemplated under Section 354(5) of CrPC (hung by the neck till the person is dead) is not only barbaric, inhuman and cruel, but also against resolutions adopted by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) that had categorically resolved that "where Capital punishment occurs, it shall be carried out so as to inflict minimum possible suffering".
Source: India Today, September 21, 2017
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