{"id":24217,"date":"2024-06-14T12:05:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T06:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=24217"},"modified":"2025-10-07T15:18:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T09:48:47","slug":"standards-applied-in-death-sentence-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/standards-applied-in-death-sentence-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Standards applied in death sentence cases"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The court has reaffirmed the \u201crarest of rare\u201d standard in several decisions.<\/li>\n<li>The Report of the <strong>262nd Law Commission, <\/strong>published in 2015, recommended the <strong>\u201cabsolute abolition\u201d <\/strong>of the death penalty \u201cfor all crimes other than terrorism-related offences and waging war\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Constituional Provisions:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Article 21 <\/strong>(<a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/right-to-change-ones-name-and-the-right-to-life-what-two-hcs-have-ruled\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Right to Life and Personal Liberty<\/a>) guarantees the right to life and personal liberty.\n<ul>\n<li>Any deprivation of this right must follow the procedure established by law.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Article 72 and Article 161<\/strong> provide the <strong>President <\/strong>and <strong>Governors <\/strong>with the power to grant pardons, reprieves, respites, or remissions of punishment or to suspend, remit, or commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Judicial Principles:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Rarest of the Rare Doctrine:<\/strong> Established in the landmark case of <strong>Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980)<\/strong>, the Supreme Court of India held that the death penalty should only be awarded in the &#8220;rarest of the rare&#8221; cases, where the alternative option is unquestionably foreclosed.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Proportionality and Balancing Aggravating and Mitigating Circumstances:<\/strong> Courts must weigh aggravating circumstances (such as the nature and gravity of the crime) against mitigating circumstances (such as the socio-economic background, age, or mental condition of the offender) before deciding on the death penalty.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Judicial Review and Confirmation: <\/strong>The death sentence pronounced by a trial court must be <strong>confirmed by the High Court<\/strong>.\n<ul>\n<li>Further, the Supreme Court can review the case, and there are provisions for mercy petitions to the President and Governors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Statutory Provisions:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860<\/strong>: Specifies offences that are punishable by death, including <strong>murder <\/strong>(Section 302), <strong>treason <\/strong>(Section 121), <strong>terrorism<\/strong>-related offences (Section 121A), and others.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973<\/strong>: Provides procedural safeguards for the accused in death penalty cases, such as the requirement for the sentence to be confirmed by a higher court (Section 366) and the right to appeal (Section 374).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Special Laws<\/strong>: Certain special legislation, such as the <strong>Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA)<\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/ndps\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS)<\/a>, and <strong>Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO)<\/strong>, also prescribe the death penalty for specific crimes.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1: What is the pardoning power of the Indian President?<\/h3>\n<p>Article 72 of the Constitution of India bestows upon the President of the Indian Union a unique function called the \u201cpardoning power\u201d. A pardon is an act of grace and cannot be deemed as a matter of right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-law\/red-fort-case-standards-for-awarding-death-presidents-mercy-power-9391493\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Red Fort case: Standards for awarding death &amp; President\u2019s \u2018mercy\u2019 power<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Report of the 262nd Law Commission, published in 2015, recommended the \u201cabsolute abolition\u201d of the death penalty \u201cfor all crimes other than terrorism-related offences and waging war<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":24218,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}