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Information about Capital Punishment In India

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Capital punishment is legal in India although rarely used. Between 1975 and 1991, about 40 people were executed, though there was a period between 1995 and 2004 when there were no executions. Anti-death penalty activists dispute those figures, claiming much higher numbers on Death Row and actual executions.

In August 2004, a 41-year-old former security man, Dhananjoy Chatterjee, was executed for raping and killing a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Calcutta. This was the country's first execution since 1995[1] and the first execution in West Bengal since 1993 when Kartik Sil and Sukumar Burman were hanged.[2]

In 2005, about a dozen people were on the country's Death Row. Many levels of appeals are available through different courts and India allows state governors and the president to grant clemency.

The death penalty is to be used in the "rarest of rare" cases according to the Supreme Court of India, although the meaning of this phrase is not clearly defined. Capital punishment can be imposed for murder, instigating a child's suicide, treason, acts of terrorism, or a second conviction for drug trafficking.

The death penalty is usually carried out by hanging. After a 1983 challenge to this method, the Supreme Court ruled that hanging did not involve torture, barbarity, humiliation or degradation.

It was reported in 2006 that the number of mercy petitions pending with President Abdul Kalam from convicts on death row stands at 20, including 12 were submitted when K. R. Narayanan was the president. In May 2004, Kalam referred several of these petitions to the home ministry for a possible review. The legal department of the ministry reiterated the advice given to him by the previous government that those cases did not deserve the president’s mercy [3].

A major controversy exists as to whether or not to execute Mohammad Afzal, a Kashmiri militant who attacked the Indian parliament building.

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Capital punishment in Asia
Sovereign states
and other territories		Afghanistan Armenia Azerbaijan1 Bahrain Bangladesh Bhutan Brunei Cambodia China People's Republic of China (Hong Kong • Macau)] Republic of China (Taiwan) Cyprus Egypt1 Georgia1 India Indonesia1 Iran Iraq Israel (see also Palestinian territories) Japan Jordan Kazakhstan1 Korea (North Korea South Korea) Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Lebanon Malaysia Maldives Mongolia Myanmar Nepal Oman Pakistan Philippines Qatar Russia1 Saudi Arabia Singapore Sri Lanka Syria Tajikistan Thailand Timor-Leste (East Timor)1 Turkey1 Turkmenistan United Arab Emirates Uzbekistan Vietnam Yemen1
1Transcontinental nations
Capital punishment, also called the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences.
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Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is often the subject of controversy. Opponents of the death penalty argue that it has led to irreversible miscarriages of justice, that life imprisonment is an effective substitute, and that it violates the criminal's right to life.
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Most major world religions take an ambiguous position on the morality of capital punishment. Religions are often based on a body of teachings and scripture that can be interpreted as either favouring or repudiating the death penalty.
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Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment, the "death penalty". The possibility of wrongful executions is one of the arguments presented by the opponents of capital punishment; other arguments
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Capital punishment was last used in Australia in 1967, when Ronald Ryan was hanged in Victoria. He was the last of 114 people executed since 1901. Previous to his execution Queensland and New South Wales had already abolished the death penalty for murder.
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Capital punishment in Brazil was last used in 1861 and has not been officially used since the proclamation of the Republic in 1889. Brazil is traditionally the second country in the Americas to abolish the death penalty as a form of punishment, preceded by Costa Rica in 1859.
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The only method used in Canada and by its ancestor English and French governments for capital punishment was hanging. Before Canada eliminated the death penalty in 1976, 1,481 people were sentenced to death, with 710 executed.
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The People's Republic of China currently uses capital punishment for a variety of crimes, ranging from tax evasion, corruption and racketeering to murder. The death penalty does not extend to Hong Kong nor Macau under the "One Country, Two Systems" Principle.
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Capital punishment in EU member states;
  • Cyprus
  • Czech Rep.
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Italy
  • Malta
  • Netherlands
  • Poland
  • Sweden
  • United Kingdom
  • Austria


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Capital punishment in France existed officially since the Middle Ages and was abolished in 1981. The last executions took place in 1977 - being the last in the then European Community.
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Capital punishment in Germany has been abolished.

The current Constitution of Germany ("Grundgesetz") as adopted in 1949 does not allow capital punishment (Art. 102 GG: "Die Todesstrafe ist abgeschafft" - Capital punishment is abolished).
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In Italy, the first pre-unitarian state to abolish the death penalty was the Grand Duchy of Tuscany as of November 30, 1786, under the reign of Leopold II. It was the first civil state in the world to do away with torture and capital punishment.
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Capital punishment in Iraq was commonly used by the government of Saddam Hussein. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, suspended capital punishment, declaring that "the former regime used certain provisions of the penal code as a means of
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Capital punishment is legal in Japan. It is estimated that there are 104 people awaiting execution in Japan. [1] Three men were executed on 23 August 2007 [1], four men were executed on December 25 2006, [2]
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Capital punishment in Malaysia applies to murder, drug trafficking, treason, and waging war against Yang di-Pertuan Agong (the King). Recently, the law has been extended to include acts of terrorism.
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Capital punishment is legal in Pakistan. At least 241 people were sentenced to death in Pakistan in 2005, and at least 31 were executed - the fifth highest number in the world.
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Capital punishment in the Philippines has a varied history and, on June 24 2006, was abolished.

Capital punishment was first abolished in the Philippines in 1987 through changes to the Constitution; it was the first country in Asia to abolish capital punishment.
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Both legal and moral status of Capital punishment in Russia are currently controversial. There exists both an implicit moratorium established by the President and an explicit one, established by the nation's highest court; however, the latter is due to expire in three years.
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Capital punishment is a legal form of punishment in the Republic of China (Taiwan). Before 2000 Taiwan had a relatively high execution rate (the data released by Executive Yuan's Ministry of Justice showed that 658 people, including six females, were executed in
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Capital punishment in the United Kingdom refers to the use of capital punishment in the United Kingdom and its constituent countries, predating the formation of the United Kingdom itself.
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Capital Punishment in the United States is officially sanctioned by 38 of the 50 states, as well as by the federal government and the military. The overwhelming majority of executions are performed by the states; the federal government maintains the legal power to use
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thrown from a height. Rome executed murderers and traitors by flinging them from the Tarpeian Rock. Defenestration, the act of throwing someone from a window, has been used more by rebels and angry mobs than by official executions.
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Decapitation (from Latin, caput, capitis, meaning head), or beheading, is the removal of a living organism's head. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g.
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Electric-chair is sometimes used in publications by organizations of people with disabilities to mean "electric-powered wheelchair".
The electric chair
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Execution by firing squad is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in times of war. The firing squad is generally composed of several soldiers or peace officers.
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A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used.
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This page is about death by hanging. For other uses, see hang.
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck
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worldwide view.


This article is about the execution and euthanasia method. For the Ice Cube album, see Lethal Injection (album).
Lethal injection involves injecting a person with fatal doses of poisonous drugs to cause death.
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thrown from a height. Rome executed murderers and traitors by flinging them from the Tarpeian Rock. Defenestration, the act of throwing someone from a window, has been used more by rebels and angry mobs than by official executions.
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Capital punishment, also called the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences.
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