High Courts confirmed death penalty in 10% cases in 2021, shows data

Globally 2,052 death sentences were recorded in 56 countries and 579 executions in 18 countries by Amnesty International in 2021. Since 2017, four people have been executed in India, according to the Prison Statistics of India report. Among India's neighbours, Pakistan had the highest number of executions at 88 and Bangladesh had 15 in the same time period. While Sri Lanka retains the law on capital punishment, no execution has taken place in the past ten years. 

On Monday, the Supreme Court (SC) referred the question of a uniform framework for imposing a death sentence in trial courts to a five-judge constitution bench. 

The bench headed by CJI UU Lalit highlighted the same-day sentencing in cases of death penalty in trial courts without considering the mitigating circumstance of the convict. As per media reports, trial courts in Gujarat have sentenced 50 people to death in eight months this year. The corresponding data for other states, however, is unavailable. 

A Business Standard analysis of data by Project 39A, a research and advocacy group, shows that of the 58 capital punishment cases brought to the High Courts (HC), 50 per cent of them resulted in an acquittal and 36.2 per cent resulted in a commutation in 2021. 

Commutation is the reduction of death penalty to life imprisonment. 

In 2021, HCs confirmed the death sentence in 10.3 per cent of cases brought before it. The number of death penalties imposed in the sessions courts has increased to 144 in 2021 from 110 in 2017.  

While acquittals as a percentage of total cases brought to the HCs have increased from 30 per cent in 2017, the confirmations in cases of capital punishment have shown a marginal increase. Out of the 114 cases brought to the HCs in 2017, only 9.6 per cent of the cases resulted in the confirmation of a sentence. In 2021, out of the 58 cases brought to the HCs, six sentences were confirmed. 

“Capital sentencing is not merely a technical issue. Imposing death sentences without real and meaningful sentencing hearings has a human cost. Our foundational work Death Penalty India Report 2016 shows that only 5 per cent of the death sentences imposed at trial courts are eventually confirmed at the Supreme Court level,” said Neetika Vishwanath, Head (Sentencing) at Project 39A

She also added that same-day sentencing in cases of death penalty without considering the convicts’ mitigating circumstances is frequent in trial courts because of differing SC decisions on the issue. 

“In light of this reality, the order of the Supreme Court referring the issue to a constitution bench 42 years after Bachan Singh (Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab 1980) is monumental,” said Vishwanath.