August 18
INDIA:
Death penalty to stay, lethal injections mooted:
Lethal injections could soon replace hanging as a mode of capital
punishment, which the government Wednesday said it had no plans to
abolish.
In reply to questions in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Home
Affairs S. Reghupathy said the Law Commission had recommended an amendment
to the Criminal Procedure Code to allow the administering of lethal
injections to death-row convicts.
However, no time frame had been fixed for introduction and passage of such
an amendment in both houses of parliament, the minister said.
In India, death penalty is carried out by hanging and the latest instance
of this mode of execution was the hanging of rapist-murderer Dhananjoy
Chatterjee in a Kolkata prison Aug 14.
An attempt to challenge hanging as a method of execution was turned down
in 1983 by the Supreme Court, which said that hanging did not involve
torture, barbarity, humiliation or degradation.
Reghupathy said there was no proposal to abolish capital punishment and
pointed out even the Law Commission favoured retaining the death penalty.
"No high court or even the Supreme Court has ever suggested reviewing or
abolishing capital punishment in the country. There is no intention on the
part of the government to do away with it," Reghupathy said.
(source: New Kerala News)
*******************
EU urges India to abolish death penalty
The European Union on Wednesday expressed dismay at the execution of
rapist and murderer Dhananjoy Chatterjee, urging the Indian authorities
not to approve any further use of the death penalty.
"The EU urges the Indian authorities to refrain from carrying out more
executions, and thereby reinstall the de facto moratorium," the Dutch
presidency of the 25-nation EU said in a statement.
The EU presidency noted that the execution represented the end of a de
facto moratorium on the death penalty, which had existed in India since
1997.
"Furthermore, the EU hopes that India will consider to abolish the death
penalty and to enshrine this abolition in law," it added.
Dhananjoy was executed on August 14 in Kolkata after being convicted of
raping and killing a schoolgirl.
(source: Times Of India)
