SC dismisses plea seeking abolition of execution by hanging

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea seeking to abolish the current practice of executing death row convicts by hanging and replace it with less painful methods such as intravenous lethal injection, shooting, electrocution or gas chamber. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta stated their verdict would not prevent the Centre from conducting a thorough review of the existing method through an expert body to determine if any alternative execution method better aligns with the constitutional goal of minimizing unnecessary pain while maintaining the dignity of the condemned prisoner.

The petition, filed in 2017 by senior advocate Rishi Malhotra, also requested the option for a condemned prisoner to choose between hanging or lethal injection as the mode of execution. During the arguments, Malhotra proposed granting such an option to death row inmates. In March 2023, the apex court expressed interest in potentially setting up a committee of experts to assess whether execution by hanging is proportionate and less painful, while emphasizing it cannot mandate a specific mode of sentencing for condemned convicts.

In 2018, the Central government strongly backed a legal provision mandating hanging as the sole method of execution, arguing that alternatives like lethal injections or firing were not less painful. The ministry's counter affidavit maintained that execution by hanging is swift, simple and devoid of any unnecessary anguish for the prisoner, a position it maintained in response to the PIL that cited the Law Commission's 187th Report urging the removal of the current execution method from the statute.