Does Capital Punishment Violate The Human Rights?

Hiba Raza, BA.LL.B., Jamia Hamdard, Hamdard Institute of Legal Studies and Research

“Criminal tendencies are always based on the mental unstability of an accused. And the methodology is

punishment, to reassure the protection of the society as whole”

ABSTRACT

Punishment is something we can easily determine as a pay back to the victim as well as to the society in which the accused is living. It is a rough treatment or handling people or the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution of an offense. Social and environmental impact plays an important role behind every offense as well as implementation of any kind of punishment. As we know social abstract is a wide universe, we can assume that every small details that affect the natural process or those things which is morally not acceptable to everyone is considered as a wrong. The nature of societal behaviour is not stagnant or constant, it keeps changing time to time, era to era. We can witness the modification in the law both penal and civil by the entire system all around the cosmos.

Many theorists proposed different ideas to absorb methodology, that how to deal with criminal character in society. They come with theories that literally sum up the criminal tendencies of the people. DETERRENCE THEORY of punishment holds that the institution of criminal punishment is morally justified because it serves to deter or restrict the crime. RETRIBUTIVE THEORY proposed an eye for an eye concept. PREVENTIVE THEORY too aims to prevent a crime rather than avenging it. And REFORMATIVE THEORY says that every individual would have given a chance to change themselves, according to the reformative approach crime is like a disease which cannot be cured by killing rather than curing it with medicine with the help of process of reformation. This paper is generally an overview that is really killing people or give them capital punishment whatever they done for is really a good solution to the society or its people, if it is really a solution then why the capital punishment or death penalty is called rarest of rare of rare? If it helps to rebuild a crime free society then why India follows reformative theory rather than deterrence theory just like Saudi Arabia?

The actual number of executions in India may run to several thousand. Rasha alias Raghuraj Singh, executed on 9th of September 1947 at Jabalpur Central Jail is presumed to be the first person executed in independent India. Akshay Thakur, Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma who hanged on 20th march 2020 involved in Nirbhaya Case were the last persons executed in India. Rattan Bai Jain, executed on 3rd January 1955 at Tihar Jail is presumed to be the first women executed in Independent India, as she murdered many children.