Releasing a report titled, “Lethal Lottery: the death penalty in India”, a study on the Supreme Court judgments awarded death penalty since 1950, the organisation says the study reveals that the administration of justice in India is riddled with fatal flaws. Therefore the only remedy is to abolish death penalty.
The report was released by Justice S S Kang (retd), former Governor of Kerala here on Wednesday.
Speaking on the occasion, Mukul Sharma, Director, Amnesty International India, said the report analysed 700 Supreme Court judgments and the authors found that Indian judicial system had failed to meet international standards with respect to the death penalty.
He said, death penalty in India had not been the “rarest of rare cases” as widely claimed. At least 140 people were sentenced to death in 2006, and 273 persons in 2007.
The report urges the government to abolish death penalty for facilitating accession to the Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which commits nations to permanent abolition of death penalty. In all, 135 countries have abolished death penalty so far.
