THE DEATH PENALTY (ABOLITION) BILL 2017
A
BILL
To abolish the death penalty in India
Be it enacted by Parliament in the Sixty-Eighth Year of the Republic of India as follows: -
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1. (1) This Act may be called the Death Penalty(Abolition) Act, 2017 (2) This Act may extend to the whole of India, except the State of Jammu and Kashmir (3) It shall come into force on such date as the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint.
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Short title, extent and commencement |
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2. Notwithstanding anything in the Indian Penal Code 1860, or any other law being in force, no person convicted of any offence, shall be punishable with the sentence of death. |
Abolition of Death Penalty
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3. (1) Notwithstanding anything in the Indian Penal Code 1860, or any other law being in force at the time of commencement, the term ‘punished with death‘ shall be read and interpreted as ‘imprisonment for life’. (2) Any conviction with the sentence of punishment with death, prior to the enactment of this Act, shall be hereinafter treated as a sentence of imprisonment for life. (3) ‘’Imprisonment for life’ shall mean imprisonment till the end of the natural life of the convict, subject to Section 433 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973.
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Substitution of Death Sentence with Life Imprisonment |
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4. This Act shall apply to offences committed before and after the commencement of this Act. |
Application of the Act |
STATEMENT OF OBJECTS AND REASONS
The death penalty is a dated form of retributive justice that is untenable with our historic traditions of non-violence and has no place in an India of the 21st century. On the contrary, it is a distraction from the needed strengthening of preventive and reformative models of our judicial systems.
Article 21 of the Constitution of India guarantees every person the right to life and personal liberty, which cannot be deprived except through a procedure established by law, that is just, fair and reasonable. The sentencing of death is measured through the doctrine of ‘the rarest of rare.’
Yet, the very nature of this doctrine lends itself to human bias and in turn, stands in stark contradiction with the previous tenet of a judgement beyond the scope of reasonable doubt. This has been noted on occasion by both the Supreme Court itself, as well as the Law Commission which concluded in its analysis of the death penalty in India, that the exercise of mercy powers under Articles 72 and161 of the Constitution of India, have failed to act as a bulwark against the miscarriage of justice in the imposition of the death penalty. The fact that lower courts award a significant number of death sentences, of which, only a fraction of these are confirmed by the Supreme Court, lends credence to the belief that the ‘rarest of rare’ doctrine has not been applied in spirit by lower courts.
That a significant percentage of individuals who have been given this sentence hail from socio-economically vulnerable groups illustrate the larger implications of such bias. Further, the utility of capital punishment as a ‘deterrent’ to crime and terror stands effectively diminished given that comprehensive studies have statistically denied any correlation between rate of crime and death penalty. The existence of such a punishment also renders implausible any scope for reformation of a convict.
The death penalty is untenable to the concept of a just and reasonable legal procedure, as the ends of justice in deterring criminal activity, is not served by the death penalty, more than the punishment of life imprisonment. The penological justifications for the death penalty are no longer valid, in light of the evolving jurisprudence and criminology, in favour of restorative justice, rather than justice motivated by retribution.
Therefore, the death penalty remains an aberration in a healthy democracy and has in effect failed to fulfil the purpose it was designed to. Instead, it has reduced the State, the moral safeguard and gatekeeper of justice for the common citizen to a position of weakness, ignoring Mahatma Gandhi’s prescient warning that an ‘eye for an eye will make the world blind’. Therefore, in the spirit of justice, fairness and immeasurable value of human life, this Bill seeks to abolish the sentence of death.
Therefore this Bill
SHASHI THAROOR
FINANCIAL MEMORANDUM
Clause 3 of the Bill commutes the death sentences of all existing convicts to life imprisonment. The maintenance of such convicts in the prisons of States and Union Territories will require certain expenses.The expenditure relating to States shall be borne out of the Consolidated Funds of respective States. The expenditure relating to Union territories shall be incurred from the Consolidated Fund of India. The Bill, therefore, if enacted would involve expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India. It is estimated that a recurring expenditure of about rupees one hundred crore per annum would be involved from the Consolidated Fund of India. A non-recurring expenditure of about rupees ten crore is also likely to be involved.
LOK SABHA
A
BILL
To abolish the Death Penalty in India
(Dr. Shashi Tharoor, M.P.)
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