New Delhi, The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition seeking the abolition of the present practice of executing a death row convict by hanging and replacing it with less painful methods such as intravenous lethal injection.
The top court, however, made it clear that it cannot direct the legislature to adopt a particular mode of sentencing condemned convicts. The bench delivered its verdict on a plea, filed in 2017 by senior advocate Rishi Malhotra, seeking removal of the present mode of execution of death row convicts by hanging from the statute. In 2018, the Centre strongly supported a legal provision that a death row convict would only be hanged to death and had told the bench that the other modes of execution, like lethal injections and firing, were not less painful.
The petition had sought abolition of the practice of executing a death row convict by hanging and replacing it with less painful methods such as “intravenous lethal injection, shooting, electrocution or gas chamber”. In March 2023, the apex court said it may consider setting up a committee of experts to examine whether execution of death row convicts by hanging was proportionate and less painful and sought “better data” from the Centre on issues regarding the mode of execution. The counter affidavit, filed by the joint secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, had said that death by hanging was “quick, simple” and free from anything that would “unnecessarily sharpen the poignancy of the prisoner”.
