India: 2018 saw highest death penalties since 2000

By Riyaz ul Khaliq</p> <p>ANKARA (AA) – In nearly two decades, Indian courts awarded highest number of death penalties last year, a new report has found. </p> <p>According to The Indian Express, a local daily, the report — Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report 2018 — released by New Delhi-based National Law University said that courts pronounced 162 death sentences in 2018 which are highest in a year since 2000.</p> <p>India is one of the countries where awarding capital punishment is legal. In 2017, Indian courts had pronounced capital punishment to 108 persons.</p> <p>The daily noted that rise in death penalties could be a result of an amended law, under which the capital punishment can be given to those convicted of rape and gang rape of girls below the age of 12. </p> <p>On December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old student was brutally assaulted with iron rods and gangraped in a private bus in the capital New Delhi — a horrific crime that roused anger in India. The then government set up a panel which suggested changes in Indian Panel Code (IPC), which were subsequently adopted by Indian Parliament in August 2018.</p> <p>According to the report, eight of 29 Indian states — Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura — did not award any death sentence during this period. </p> <p>The report notes that most of the death penalties were awarded by trail courts which can be challenged in Supreme Court of India. </p> <p>Last year, the Supreme Court had commuted death sentences to life imprisonment in 11 of the 12 cases it heard, the daily noted. </p> <p>The spike in capital punishment has triggered a debate in India. </p> <p>Rebecca John, an Indian lawyer, told The Wire, a local news website: “This scheme is a serious abnegation of all constitutional principles settled over decades by courts of law, and poses a direct threat to the fundamental right to life and liberty.”