The Epistemology Of Capital Punishment And Rarest Of The Rare Case

Aditya Raj Pandey, Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad

ABSTRACT

Today in the modern world death penalty and capital punishment connotes each other. More particularly in modern India, another expression ‘‘rarest of the rare case’’ is attached with capital punishment, meaning thereby the court of law has to decide and provide grounds as to whether the crime committed is of such heinous degree to be termed as ‘Rarest of the rare case’ As the present research article is solely based on capital punishment and rarest of rare cases the foremost question that comes in the mind is whether or not the crime committed comes under the preview of capital punishment. Ultimately it is also equally important to see the justification of punishment under ‘‘rarest of the rare case’’ The present research paper also provides the conceptual framework of Capital Punishment in India as reviewed over the modern time. The brief case analysis in this research article directly puts forward the circumstances under which a crime was considered as “Rarest of the rare case” and conversely also those cases where only life imprisonment is given instead of death penalty. In India, we still find award of capital punishment, specifically, a new terminology ‘‘rarest of the rare case’’ is subjected to a crime to award capital punishment. We may also observe that in many cases which are specifically engraved as rarest of the rare and at the same time we also find cases of crime where it is restricted only to the punishment of life imprisonment.

Keywords: Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, Life Imprisonment, Rarest of the rare case.