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death penalty

01 August 2015

“What was played out this week at the Supreme Court was the proverbial final nail,” said Surendranath.

31 July 2015

SC: Before sunrise“Hope died, man died, justice lived,” commented Rishabh Sancheti, one of Yakub Memon's advocates, about the early-morning, eleventh hour Supreme Court hearing that ultimately failed to save his client from the noose. “Have you (heard) it happen in any other country?”

29 July 2015

SCOI Report, Wednesday 29 July 2015: Yakub Abdul Razak Memon vs State of Maharashtra Through the Secretary, Home Department, and Others

28 July 2015

SCOI Reports 28 July 2015: Yakub Abdul Razak Memon vs State of Maharashtra Through the Secretary, Home Department, and Others.

28 July 2015

Photo by Andy DolmanSCOI Report, Monday 27 July 2015: Yakub Abdul Razak Memon vs State of Maharashtra Through the Secretary, Home Department, and Others

 

24 July 2015

The Supreme Court will hear on Monday the plea by 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts convict Yakub Memon’s plea challenging the death warrant issued against him and for the stay of his execution set for July 30.

“I have already assigned the bench. It will come by Monday,” said Chief Justice HL Dattu as senior counsel TR Andhyarujina mentioned the matter before the bench on Friday.

Update: The NLU Delhi death penalty litigation clinic has issued a statement:

The writ petition filed by Yakub Memon along with an Intervention Application filed by National Law University, Delhi through its Death Penalty Litigation Clinic will challenge the validity of the death warrant on the grounds that the protections available to death row prisoners during death warrant proceedings (as laid down by the Supreme Court in Shabnam v. Union of India in May 2015) were violated by the Government of Maharashtra.

21 July 2015

Death row convicts in India are mostly from the backward classes, religious minorities and economically weaker sections, reported the Times of India.

93.5 per cent of those sentenced to death for terror offences in the last 15 years were Dalits or religious minorities while 75 per cent of the total death row convicts were from the economically weaker sections, revealed the Law Commission of India’s interview with 373 death row convicts.

The commission, which is currently working on a proposal to abolish the death penalty from India’s statute books, had commissioned the practical study by national law university students who conducted the field interviews.

The study also revealed that 23 per cent of the interviewed convicts weren’t schooled, and most of the rest didn’t complete secondary education, weren’t allowed to attend court proceedings in their own cases and had inadequate interaction with the lawyers on the case.

Death row convicts in India are not permitted to do prison labour, are lodged in separate barracks and have psychological and other health care issues.

Only 1 per cent of undertrials can afford legal representation, senior advocate Prashant told TOI, while human rights lawyer and Supreme Court advocate on record Colin Gonsalves commented that the finding of 75 per cent arrived at in the study was the absolute bare minimum.

Between 2000 and 2015, 1,617 were sentenced to death by the trial courts – 42 per cent of them from UP and Bihar. The conviction rate at the stage of high courts and the SC dropped to 17.5 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively as most death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment or acquitted, added the TOI report.

19 June 2015

Hanging high, but not quite dry (Photo by Patrick Feller)Chief Justice of India (CJI) HL Dattu is not far from matching a new record: since he became CJI on 28 September 2014, he has confirmed the death sentences of 10 persons in five cases.

29 May 2015

NLU Delhi’s nine-month-old death penalty clinic helped death penalty convicts Shabnam and Saleem win relief in the Supreme Court, which quashed their death warrants on Wednesday after having stayed their execution earlier in the week.

The clinic, according to its press release, coordinated the legal representation for Shabnam and Saleem who in 2008 had, together as lovers, murdered Shabnam’s family and were sentenced to death in 2010 by a sessions judge in Amrohi. Their death penalty was later confirmed by the Supreme Court and six days after the confirmation their death warrants were handed down. They had filed criminal appeals before the Supreme Court which dismissed these appeals on 15 May 2015.

Senior advocates Raju Ramachandran and Anand Grover, representing the petitioners in Shabnam v. Union of India & Anr and National Law University, Delhi through Death Penalty Litigation Clinic v. Union of India & Anr, challenged the hasty award of death warrants and, according to the release, “emphasised the importance of adhering to constitutionally compatible procedures when decisions with an irreversible impact on an individual’s life are taken by the State”.

The death warrants were issued before Shabnam and Saleem could file review petitions or curative petitions, for which the law gives them 30 days, reported the Indian Express.

Justices AK Sikri and UU Lalit held that the death warrants were awarded in “undue haste and were unwarranted” and “ignored the legal and constitutional options (open court review petitions and mercy petitions before the Governor of Uttar Pradesh and the President of India) available to [Shabnam and Saleem]”.

The Supreme Court, through this judgment, has laid down a clear procedure for issuing death warrants which can only be issued after all legal and constitutional remedies have been exhausted. The court also noted that even when death warrants are sought principles of natural justice and due process of law cannot be ignored.

NLU Delhi’s death penalty clinic is currently working on the legal representation of around 30 prisoners sentences to death.