The Supreme Court on Tuesday pondered over the ‘Death by Hanging’ sentence and asked the Central government to initiate a discussion on whether the method is too cruel and needs to be replaced with a “less painful” alternative.
It also suggested the formation of an expert committee to examine the death penalty. A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha also asked Attorney General (AG) R Venkataramani to seek details on the impact of the death sentence and the amount of pain inflicted. It asked to find out whether it is the most suitable method available at present, a Bar & Bench report said on Tuesday.
“Come back to us and we should have better data before us on the impact of death by hanging, pain caused and the period taken for such death to take place,” the bench told AG R Venkataramani. “Find out if today’s science suggesting that this is best method today or is there another method which is more suitable to uphold human dignity,” it added.
SC suggested the Centre to form a committee to conduct a study into the death sentence. “If Centre has not done this study, then we can form a committee which can have experts from two national law universities like NLU Delhi, Bangalore or Hyderabad, some doctors from AIIMS, distinguished people across the country and some scientific experts,” the Court stated.
Citing a Law Commission report, lawyer Rishi Malhotra termed the method as “absolutely cruel”.
“Even today the question that there should be dignity in death is not in contest or inflicting less pain… Hanging seems to satisfy both these conditions… Does lethal injection satisfy on this count. In USA it was found that lethal injection is found not to be immediate,” said Justice PS Narasimha.
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