news details |
|
|
| Will death penalty be banned in India ? | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Feb 13 : Will India amend the constitution and the relevant law so as to ban capital punishment ?This question has assumed significance following uproar over the execution of Mohd.Afzal Guru,parliament convict who was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court.
The demand for ending death penalty in India has surfaced even in various European countries besides the USA.A number of social activists and legal experts too have started voicing support for end to death penalty.
The hanging of Afzal Guru has led to global rights groups asking India to end the use of executions and move towards abolishing the death penalty. '"Questions need to be asked why the Indian government executed Afzal Guru now," New York-based Human Rights Watch's South Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly has said."
"No one argues that those who engage in serious crimes shouldn't be punished, but the death penalty is brutal and irreversible, and there is no convincing evidence to suggest it serves as a deterrent," Ganguly said. The group said it opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an inherently irreversible, inhumane punishment.
But a number of political pundits do not support the demand for a total and blanket ban on capital punishment on the plea that since the rise of terrorist-related activities and violence there was need for preserving death penalty on the country's statute books.
Senior police officers and a couple of legal experts argue that once people arrested on charge of having committed serious crime were awarded life imprisonment they get an opportunity to come out of the jails on parole on pretext or the other.In certain cases the detention period is reduced.
They said that when there is demand for sentencing rapists to death why should people demand end to death penalty to those terrorists who shed blood of innocent civilians. Reports said that in over 97 countries death penalty has been abolished and capital punishment was in vogue in less than 50 countries where too the judiciary has been avoiding awarding death sentences. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
