Amnesty Intl reignites death penalty debate in India

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"Death penalty violates the right to life and does not have any place in the modern justice system," he added.

"While the death penalty continues to be used in India, there remains a danger that it will be used disproportionately against ethnic minorities, the poor or other disadvantaged groups. There is only one way to ensure such inequalities in the administration of justice do not occur: the complete abolition of the death penalty," said Dr. V. Suresh, president, People's Union for Civil Liberties, co-author of the report.

The report has thrown open a fresh debate on abolition of death penalty even as globally, calls are getting louder for its abolition. In December 2007, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted for a Global Moratorium on Executions and though 104 countries supported it, India voted against the resolution.

"India stands at a crossroads. It can choose to join the global trend towards a moratorium on the death penalty, as adopted by the UN General Assembly last year. It will also then join 27 countries in the Asia Pacific region that have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice," Sharma said.

"Or it can continue to hang death row inmates, when the judicial system that puts them there has been shown by this extensive research to be unfair," he added.

Capital punishment, though existing in India, is rarely used in the country as a deterrent form of punishment. Between 1975 and 1991, about 40 people were executed, though there was a period between 1995 and 2004 when there were no executions. Post--2004, there was only one execution - the death by hanging of a a 41-year-old former security man, Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was held guilty for raping and killing a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Calcutta, West Bengal.

In India the death penalty is carried out by hanging. An attempt to challenge this method failed in the Supreme Court, which stated in its 1983 judgment that hanging did not involve torture, barbarity, humiliation or degradation.

Under Indian law, the death penalty can be imposed for murder, gang robbery with murder, abetting the suicide of a child or insane person, waging war against the government, and abetting mutiny by a member of the armed forces.

In recent years, however, special courts have also extended the penalty to cases of terrorism under anti-terror legislation.

Of late, some people are also pushing for it to be used against rapists.

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