Click to play videoDeath row convicts are human beings and “should not be used as pawns in furthering some larger political or Government policy”. The Government must consider their pleas for mercy expeditiously.
The Supreme Court said this while dismissing a death row convict’s plea that his punishment be scrapped on the ground that he had not been hanged three years after he was given death. But it observed that making a death row convict wait was “cruel”.
"The cruelty of capital punishment lies not only in the execution itself and the pain incident thereto, but also in the dehumanising effects of the lengthy imprisonment prior to execution," it said.
The court on Friday reminded the Government that the mercy petitions of 26 condemned prisoners, including Parliament attack convict Mohammed Afzal Guru, were pending before the President.
"We must say with the greatest emphasis that human beings are not chattels and should not be used as pawns in furthering some larger political or government policy," the court observed.
Is capital punishment cruel? Is it time to end capital punishment? CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghose asked Congress Rajya Sabha MP and Spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi, social activist Harsh Mander and senior lawyer and BJP leader Mahesh Jethmalani.
Jethmalani believed death penalty was a political tool. Governments, through mercy petitions, use it according to their whim and fancy.
“It was a Congress Government that very expeditiously decided Kehar Singh’s mercy petition in the assassination case of Indira Gandhi and he was hung. Afzal Guru was pronounced guilty by the Supreme Court in 2005—it is a travesty of justice that the hanging sword of Damocles should be kept over the head of the accused for so long,” said Jethmalani.
Why is Government delaying taking a decision on Afzal Guru’s clemency petition? The debate on mercy petitions and capital punishment cannot be reduced to Afzal Guru, replied Singhvi.
“There are probably 24 people, at the last count in May 2009, on death row. The earliest of them was convicted in 1987 and the Supreme Court confirmed the punishment in 1989. No. 22 in the list of 24 is Afzal Guru—let’s stop playing politics. The NDA government and subsequently the Congress have delayed taking a decision (on Afzal Guru’s plea),” said Singvi.
“A part of the reason for this was that there have been Presidents who have had an approach that death penalty must not be implemented. There was a period when hardly any death penalty was implemented because of presidential pendency,” he said.
The NDA’s demand that Afzal be “plucked out” from the list of death row convicts and hanged immediately is just politics, Singvi alleged.
Death penalty is a larger ethical issue than Afzal Guru’s mercy plea, said Mander. “A test of a civilized society is how it treats its worst transgressors. It (death penalty) is also whether our intention is to take revenge or to deter. If it is about deterrence then there is evidence that capital punishment doesn’t lead to less crime,” he said.
Opponents of death penalty say the punishment is irreversible. It violates the principle of justice that there shouldn’t be a scintilla of doubt against the guilty.
Singvi believed India had struck the “right balance” in the debate on capital punishment. “In the whole issue of abolition versus retention, there are a lot of good arguments on both sides. I think India has struck the right balance. I support the current law which is not abolitionist but not simply retention. It says retain death penalty but only in the rarest of the rare cases,” he said.
The argument is not simple, said Jethmalani. The Government wants to retain the death penalty but delay or expedite mercy petitions according to its will. “Four years on any mercy plea is inordinate delay. If there are 22 mercy petitions before Afzal Guru’s, kindly dispose them of.”
Jethmalani said the Supreme Court in 1984 had said that all mercy petitions must be disposed of by the President as a matter of self-discipline in a period of months. “Somebody has seriously missed the law here,” he said.
He believed all arguments against death penalty didn’t apply to terrorists because they were not ordinary criminals. Terrorists were beyond reform; they were a security risk if given life sentence and preferred death sentence to life, he said.
What if Ajmal Kasab, the only gunman on trial for the Mumbai terrorist attacks, is given the death sentence after being found guilty and pleads for clemency? How long will it take to decide on his mercy plea?
“We can’t speculate but if it ends in a death penalty it may well end in a clemency plea,” said Singhvi. “In that case according to the procedures it will be decided. So long as law of the land is death penalty, certainly we are not arguing for non-imposition (of punishment) on people like Kasab or Afzal Guru.”
Singhvi argued that for long periods the Presidents have not taken a decision on mercy petitions. “Governments, in a sense, have been helpless,” he said.
Jethmalani disagreed. “The Government is not helpless at all. The President acts in these matters on the advice of the Government,” he argued.
SMS poll on is it time to end capital punishment?
No: 73 per cent
Yes: 27 per cent
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