CONSTITUTIONAL VALIDITY AND JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION OF DEATH PENALTY IN INDIA

Abstract [English]

Capital punishment, also known as the "death penalty" or "death sentence," is imposed for serious crimes such as murder or multiple murders, rape, or any other crime for which a death penalty is provided by law. It is legal in India, but it is rarely voted for. Because of the possibility of commutation to life imprisonment, the penalty is not always carried out. Only four times since 1995: on Auto Shankar in 1995, Dhananjoy Chatterjee in 2004, Ajmal Kasab in 2012, and Afzal Guru in 2013 and Akshay Thakur, Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma, who were hanged on 20 March 2020, guilty for rape, Despite the fact that death sentences are prohibited in many countries, there is no international agreement on their legality. Not only in India, but also in several developed countries, capital punishment or the death penalty has always been a source of debate. The motive for providing punishment in India is based on two aspects: the first is that the offender should suffer for the pain and injury he or she caused the victim, and the second is that sanctioning punishments will deter others from committing wrongs. This paper focuses on India's capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, which is only applied in extremely rare cases. Furthermore, in the context of the Indian judiciary, this paper investigates the constitutional validity of capital punishment.