Capital Punishment in India

Hema Gootala*

Published on June 02, 2021 | Manuscript Number: 2021/LLR/02087 | Page Numbers: 87-95

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Abstract: India being a developing country there are many legislations enacted to control crime rates in the society. All punishments are based on one principle i.e., there shall be a punishment for the wrongdoer. To maintain law and order in society, capital punishment is the highest degree of punishment that can be awarded to a criminal.

 Mere killing a person in the name of justice does not serve any purpose; one should focus on eliminating the criminal acts but not the criminal. Over 1000 executions are made in China every year, the only country in the world to practice the death penalty at its peak.

In India, the doctrine of “rarest of the rare” is followed and often the capital punishment gets commuted to lifetime imprisonment and whereas in China the death penalty once granted cannot be revoked at any cost. This is the reason why the United Nations opposed the concept of capital punishment and stated that “Life is precious and death is irrevocable”.

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Keywords: Capital Punishment, Rarest of the rare.

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*Damodaram Sanjivayya National Law University, Visakhapatnam

Cite as: Hema Gootala, 'Capital Punishment in India' (2021) 1(1) LKO. L. REV. 87

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