ABSTRACT
This piece explores what the death penalty really looks like inside India’s criminal justice system. Not just in judgments or statutes, but in broken courtrooms, overworked legal aid lawyers, and families waiting for answers outside jail gates. The law calls it justice. But for the people caught inside it—most of them poor, many of them powerless—it feels less like justice and more like abandonment. This article takes a hard look at whether the system, as it stands, can ever carry out something as final as the death penalty without doing more harm than good.
INTRODUCTION
The Indian Constitution promises fairness. It promises dignity. It promises that even when the state punishes someone, it will do so by following rules that are just and humane. That’s the promise. But when it comes to the death penalty, that promise begins to break. The courts say it should only be used in the “rarest of rare” cases. But those words have not stopped mistakes. They haven’t stopped poor people from being sentenced to death while others with better lawyers walk free. The law may be clear on paper, but in the real world, things work differently.
This isn’t about defending crime. It’s about whether the state can afford to be this final—this absolute—when everything else in the system is so flawed.
KEYWORDS
Death penalty, justice system, Article 21, fairness, dignity, inequality, sentencing.
MAIN BODY
Legally, the death penalty is still allowed in India. Section 302 of the IPC, along with a few other provisions, lets courts impose it for crimes like murder or terrorism. In Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980), the Supreme Court tried to limit its use by saying it should only be used when life imprisonment is “unquestionably” not enough. That principle still stands today.
But how that principle is applied varies wildly from courtroom to courtroom. There’s no fixed rule, no checklist. Everything depends on how the judge reads the case, what the lawyer manages to say, and sometimes even on public pressure or media noise. It’s not a level playing field.
The Constitution protects the right to life under Article 21. And the courts have said again and again that this right can only be taken away through a process that is fair and reasonable. But when you look at who ends up on death row, it’s mostly people who had no chance to begin with. They couldn’t afford a proper lawyer. They were arrested in weak cases. They were interrogated without safeguards. They barely understood the legal process.
In 2016, a massive study by Project 39A showed that most people on death row in India are from Dalit, Adivasi, or Muslim communities. Almost all of them are poor. Most never finished school. Some didn’t even know the full details of their own trial. One prisoner thought his sentence was still under appeal when he was already on death row.
These aren’t just data points. These are people who got trapped in a system they couldn’t fight. Some may have committed terrible crimes. But others were failed by the very system that was supposed to decide their guilt.
In Mithu v. State of Punjab (1983), the Supreme Court struck down a law that made the death penalty automatic for some offences. The Court said everyone deserves a chance to be heard, no matter how serious the crime. Later, in Shatrughan Chauhan v. Union of India (2014), the Court recognised that keeping a person on death row for years—without clarity, without closure—was torture. It said delays in mercy petitions could be grounds for commuting a sentence. But even with these safeguards, problems remain.
People still get sentenced to death in unfair trials. Legal aid lawyers are often too stretched or too inexperienced. Police often rely on confessions made under pressure. Judges don’t always hear mitigating factors properly. And the mental health of prisoners is rarely examined before sentencing. In Santosh Bariyar v. State of Maharashtra (2009), the Court itself admitted that there had been serious missteps in earlier death penalty cases.
Even when the courts try to soften the blow, the damage is done. In Swamy Shraddananda v. State of Karnataka (2008), the Court gave itself the option to impose life without parole—so it wouldn’t have to choose between death and a sentence that might be shortened later. It was a middle path. But by then, the person had already spent years under the shadow of execution.
There’s also no real proof that the death penalty stops crime. Criminologists and studies from all over the world—including India—have said that what really matters is the certainty of being caught and punished, not how harsh the punishment is. Most violent crimes are done in the heat of the moment. The thought of the death penalty doesn’t come into it.
Meanwhile, the impact of this system is brutal—not just on the prisoners, but on their families. Parents sell land to pay lawyers. Wives move from village to city to be closer to jail. Children grow up with no clear answer about what happened. And even if a death sentence is later reduced, the years already lost can’t be taken back.
CONCLUSION
The death penalty remains on India’s statute books. It is legal. It is constitutional. But legality alone is not enough. In a country where justice is often delayed, where access depends on money and status, and where mistakes have already happened, the risk of executing an innocent person is not theoretical—it’s real.
Over time, courts have tried to tighten the rules, reduce misuse, and add safeguards. But the system itself remains deeply flawed. And when those flaws affect life and death decisions, they can’t be brushed aside.
The law was never meant to kill. It was meant to protect. And right now, the death penalty does more to expose the system’s weaknesses than to show its strength. A fair system must punish—but it must do so in a way that leaves room for truth, for change, and above all, for dignity.
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WRITTEN BY LALITHA SASANKA G
