Vaishali. T, Assistant Professor of Law, Saveetha School Of Law (SIMATS), Chennai
Abstract
Death penalty a cruel and unreversible form of sentence once it is been executed. An order to take way one’s life is not play thing. India still retains the death penalty in the cases of serious crimes. Hon’ble supreme court has also strived its way to pronounce a principled guideline in sentencing and imposing death penalty against an offender. The application of court’s precedent on determining the aggravating and mitigating circumstances in the case on inflicting death penalty is also inconstantly applied by the judiciary. The principled guideline prescribed in Bachan singh case is inconstantly applied and imposing death penalty in rarest of rare case is also no more been a rare. The judiciary has also accepted per incuriam in certain cases as death penalty is imposed the convicts in erroneous. The death penalty is no more awarded based on principled sentencing, it has become judge centric sentencing and if execution on convicts based on judgement is made and later if it is discovered that the executed accused is not guilt then no mechanism can bring back the life of dead person thus in order to evade this cruel circumstance , death penalty need to be abolished.
Keywords: Death penalty, per incuriam, judge centric, principled guideline, erroneous and abolition
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