Former CJI P N Bhagwati had observed that there must be unanimity among judges who order irreversible death sentences.
Nearly 24 years ago, former Chief Justice of India P N Bhagwati had observed that there must be unanimity among judges who order irreversible death sentences. With the Supreme Court observating that there hasn’t been one voice among different benches in awarding the extreme penalty in ‘the rarest of rare’ cases, the debate has once more come into light.
As long as the capital punishment is alive on the statute; its application can’t be eliminated. But the court itself hasn’t evolved any specific policy to hand down the controversial punishment, but it is awarded as per the individual judicial perception regarding the gravity of the offence.
“What should we do?” an exasperated bench recently observed, while converting the extreme penalty into life term, in case of a man who had killed his brother to inherit his estate. Another bench recently awarded the death sentence to a man who had killed his three children and wife, after rejecting his plea that the murders were committed under the influence of liquor.
More recently, different benches felt differently on the issue of awarding the death penalty to the accused who had brutally murdered one or more kids kidnapped for ransom. There wasn’t any dispute over facts of the heinous act fell into the category of ‘the rarest of rare’, but the fate of perpetrators have been lying scattered between the death cells and over-crowded jails.
Delhi’s fast track court judge Rajinder Kumar recently set the trend by sentencing a senior police officer to death on charges of custodial killing. At least 4,530 persons have been killed either in custody during the past three years in India. Only a few cops have been sentenced with ordinary imprisonment. Ten Maharashtra cops sentenced to life term for killing a youth in custody, got major reprieve when the SC felt the prosecution couldn’t prove the charge against them beyond reasonable doubt. But another bench has cautioned the courts that they shouldn’t forget that prosecution is handicapped in prosecuting cops charged with custodial deaths. Thus, the principle of ‘beyond reasonable’ must be relaxed in cases of violation of human rights.
Be that as it may, the propensity of criminality among law enforcement agents must not win over the judicial propensity to do justice that leaves doubt.
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