In the progress of Homo Sapiens in their community and social living, there would have been several landmarks, most of which would have been established, initially, through the use of power, and subsequently through theological discussions, and thereafter through discoveries, and then through intellectual social interactions. Influencing the members of any community through interventions to desist from breaking the norms of an existing society was necessary and punishing people became one of them.
However, oligarchical and monarchical governance of societies introduced newer forms of harsher measures in dealing with people, who did not fall in line with the social norms. Thus, as the democratic living started, there were considered structures, rules and regulations which were organised to regulate the norms of behaviour of people through prescribed punishments.
Sometime in August 2026 the Additional Sessions Judge, Mr Ravikumar Diwakar of Muzaffarnagar, UP, sentenced twenty two persons to death within a span of five months. There were a hundred murder cases listed in Ravikumar’s court. Some of his cases included a case which was twenty seven years old and another which was twelve years old.
However, the District Sessions Court Judge ordered these cases to be transferred to the District Court after these twenty two death sentences were criticised in the mass media.
Judge A.M. Basheer of Neyyattinkara District Sessions Court, Kerala, sentenced four people to death in a period of eight months. This included the death sentence to Greeshma, a young woman in the murder of Sharonraj, who did not name her, with whom he was in love, even though he knew that she had mixed poison in his drink, which caused his death. Similarly, Judge G.V. Sridevi of Mavelikara Additional Sessions Court in Kerala awarded death sentences to fifteen accused collectively in a high profile murder case of Ranjith Srinivasan in January 2025.
There were cruel punishments meted out to offenders in the past; such as hanging, burning, being thrown down from cliffs, crushed under trained elephants, slow slicing of the body, removal of limbs one by one, breaking ribs, pulling out internal organs while still alive, dipped into boiled oil or water, tied to ropes and dragged under water, offering lethal injections, making walk on fire, tied to a horse and dragged were cruelty inflicted.
The amount of cruelty did not depend on the offence, but on the need to convince the common people with a threat that this would happen to them, if they disobeyed the common code of conduct. Capital punishment was simpler from the point of view of both, the punisher and the punished.
Modern thinkers and philosophers do not approve of capital or even corporal punishments. They believe that any punishment offered should be ethically justifiable and morally upright. The four types of punishment include death, life imprisonment, imprisonment for a term, deprivation of both properties as well as money as fine imposed. However, a large number of psychologists and sociologists do not approve of the first, the death sentence.
They argue that a legal killing is as bad as any other killing because the state is taking the life of a citizen, citing the offence committed by the latter as the reason for the killing. The reason may differ but the act of killing remains the same, being the offence of taking another one’s life. Hence, it is unethical.
Reduction of freedom to live as earlier after an offence seems to be the dictum of any social reformer and this does not include death punishment. The imprisonment or being kept away from the family, or deprivation to live without the dear ones or fine of any amount or even property are punishments that are acceptable for such thinkers for obvious reasons.
They call it the positive punishment to rehabilitate the persons gradually into the society again and help them learn to live with other people. Therefore, a death sentence does not give an opportunity for a person who did an offence because there is no time given to the offender for thinking or deciding to perform differently in the society. A judicial homicide is essentially unethical because it is based on the old world idea of life for life.
In India, there have not been many death sentences executed during the last two decades. The latest was in 2020, when four of the accused in the Nirbhaya rape and murder case in New Delhi were awarded death sentences which was executed. Women were not easily hanged to death in India.
The only recorded instance was the case of the hanging of Rattan Bai Jain in January 1955 in Delhi for murdering three girls in the clinic, where she worked because she doubted that they had affairs with her husband. There were only four others, who were hanged to death in this century in India.
Something that has disturbed sociologists and psychologists in this country is the increase of the number of reasons for awarding death sentences as per the new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. It has gone up from twelve to eighteen which means that India is for hanging more people to death. This has been condemned by several social service organisations too. In fact, the number of reasons, which was twelve, should have come down instead of going up. Someone gave a consoling statement that Pakistan has twenty seven different offences listed and China has more.
However, there are several countries which do not have death sentences. Germany abolished it in 1949, Canada in 1998, England in 1965, Gambia and Sierra Leone in 2021, Central African Republic in 2022, Zimbabwe in 2024. Israel has provision for the death sentence but it has used it only once in the last seventy five years. 144 countries have abolished death sentences. Some countries retaining the death sentence include India, China and the US.
Death sentences are unethical because the judge and the state are doing exactly the same act of murder, which has been committed by an offender, the convict. One can only hope more countries will give up death sentences and make each one a civilised one.