India and the death penalty

Mrs Gandhi's assassins were put to death

By Sanjoy Majumder

 Although India is one of a number of countries around the world which still upholds capital punishment, it is rarely used.

A 1983 ruling by the country's Supreme Court stated that the death penalty should be imposed only in "the rarest of rare cases".

 Only particularly gruesome or politically sensitive cases have attracted the penalty.

 The assassins of India's independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi, and former prime minister Indira Gandhi were among those executed in the past 50 years.

 Special circumstances

 In India the death penalty is carried out by hanging.

 Mahatma Gandhi's murderer was also executed

An attempt to challenge this method of execution failed before the Supreme Court, which stated in its 1983 judgement that hanging did not involve torture, barbarity, humiliation or degradation.

 The last known execution was in 1989 when one of Mrs Gandhi's assassins was put to death.

 Under Indian law, the death penalty can be imposed for:

 murder

gang robbery with murder

abetting the suicide of a child or insane person

waging war against the government

abetting mutiny by a member of the armed forces

In recent years, however, special courts have also extended the penalty to cases of terrorism under anti-terror legislation.

 Wednesday's sentence is the first death penalty handed out under the new Prevention of Terrorism Act, passed by parliament earlier this year.

 "There were fewer death penalty cases in the 70s and 80s," says constitutional lawyer Rajiv Dhawan.

 "But there seems to be a revival in the last two to three years," he told BBC News Online.

 Appeal

 Once sentenced, a defendant has the right to appeal against the sentence as well as the conviction.

 The appeal will be heard by a higher court and can go all the way up to the Supreme Court, a process that can take two to three years.

 If all fails, the president of India can be approached to grant clemency - something he can only do after seeking the advice of the Indian cabinet.

 In the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case a special court had sentenced to death 26 men and women in 1998.

 In May 1999 the Supreme Court commuted three of the death sentences to life imprisonment and released 19 others.

 Of the remaining four, one was granted clemency in August 2000, while the appeals of the others are pending before the president.