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Data on death penalty convicts goes 'missing'

National Law University has said that some prison authorities have reported that data related to death row convicts has either been lost or destroyed by termites.

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In a serious lapse by prison authorities, records of death penalty convicts who have been executed since India's independence, have gone missing from many prisons, according to a report in a leading English daily. National Law University (NLU) has been compiling data on all death penalty cases in India since 1947, as part of a research study to examine the fairness with which capital punishment is awarded. 

However, NLU director Anup Surendranath, who is heading the death penalty research project, said that some prison authorities had written to them saying that records had either been lost or destroyed by termites.

NLU is being aided in the study by the Central government and was able to confirm data related to 755 executions. According to a report of the Law Commission (1967), the total number of cases in which the death sentence was awarded between 1953 to 1963 was 1,410. 

The missing files include mercy pleas of four convicts - Krishna Mochi and three others convicted in the Krishna Mochi & Ors vs. Bihar case of 2001. Their pleas were sent to the President in 2003, but an RTI filed by Suhas Chakma of Asian Centre for Human Rights found that the records were missing from the Home Ministry. 

Surendranath said that they have been unable to find an exhaustive list of prisoners executed in India. The data produced by the National Crime Records Bureau reportedly has gaps, as the numbers given by them are contradictory.  

Till now, the NLU has interviewed 373 surviving death penalty convicts, and has drawn their socio-economic profiles which shows that a majority of them belong to backward classes, religious minorities and economically-weak sections. Also, 94% prisoners sentenced to death in terror cases are Dalits and religious minorities.

The NLU will make public a detailed analysis of the socio-economic profile, legal representation and death row duration of convicts by mid-August. 

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