In a fresh development in the 26/11 terror attack case, Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab on Tuesday filed an appeal in the Bombay high court challenging death penalty awarded to him for killing 166 persons on November 26, 2008.
Under attack from right wing forces, Gujarat government on Tuesday kept on hold its decision to seek death penalty for former minister Maya Kodnani, Babu Bajrangi and eight others in the 2002 Naroda Patiya riots case.
India has opposed a UN resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, saying it goes against Indian statutory law and the sovereign right of every country to determine their own legal system.
Has death penalty in the statute served as a deterrent for heinous crime?
Justice J S Verma has said that there was a unanimous view by women's groups against the death penalty for convicted rapists. "It was a unanimous suggestion of even women leaders who have been fighting for the cause for decades. Even the current trend is against the death penalty," he said.
India was among the 39 countries that voted against a United Nations General Assembly draft resolution which called for abolishing the death penalty, saying every nation had the "sovereign right" to determine its own legal system.
As India executed 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has called on nations who still use the death penalty to abolish the practice.
The man involved in the kidnapping and killing of an Indian-origin Sikh family, including an eight-month-old baby, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder, one for each life lost, authorities in California said.
The special court of Islamabad on December 17 last handed down the death penalty to 74-year-old Musharraf after six years of hearing the high-profile treason case against him. The case was filed by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government in 2013.
Bangladesh's top legal official has proposed to remove the words 'secularism' and 'socialism' from the Constitution apart from a provision prescribing capital punishment for regime change through extra-constitutional means.
His comment came after the Shiv Sena attacked him for petitioning the president to save Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memon from the gallows.
A court in Sharjah on Monday waived the death sentence awarded to eight young men from Punjab for the murder of a Pakistani national after a Dubai-based Indian hotelier paid blood money to the family of the victim on their behalf. The murder took place on July 11, 2009 following which 10 men, eight Indians and two Pakistanis, were arrested. The death penalty of the two Pakistani men has also been waived off after Dubai-based hotelier SP Singh Oberoi paid the blood money.
A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and I S Mehta, however, upheld the life imprisonment awarded to the third convict by a trial court in the case.
The Maharashtra government will try its level best to seek death penalty for Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist caught alive in 26/11 attacks, Home Minister R RPatil said in Mumbai on Sunday.
District and Sessions Judge S P Garg had on April 13 found six out of 10 suspected members of banned terror outfit guilty for their varying roles in the case. Three other convicted terrorists were handed down varied jail terms.
Days after the execution of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, President Pranab Mukherjee rejected the mercy petitions of four associates of slain forest brigand Veerappan, who were given a death sentence in a landmine blast case.
Bharatiya Janata Party member Subramanian Swamy on Friday introduced in the Rajya Sabha a private member bill which seeks "deterrent punishment", including the death penalty, for slaughter of cow and issues related to that.
Slamming the police for 'serious lapses' in probe of the 1996 Lajpat Nagar bomb blast case, the Delhi high court on Thursday acquitted two alleged Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front terrorists, sentenced with capital punishment in the case, and commuted the death penalty of the third terrorist to life imprisonment.
The government on Friday said in Rajya Sabha that it is "not in favour" of abolishing the capital punishment considering the "prevailing circumstances" in the country.
Pitching in for harsher punishment for rape, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Tuesday said her government would request the Centre to make necessary changes in the law to provide death penalty and chemical castration to those involved in such crimes.
Soumya, an employee of a shopping mall in Kochi, was pushed out of a running train in February 1, 2011 and raped.
Lance Armstrong says he received the 'death penalty' for using performance-enhancing drugs and lying about it for over a decade, but the disgraced cyclist still harbours a strong desire to compete and hopes his lifetime ban will one day be lifted.
However, it was only in May 2023 that the central probe agency the CBI filed a chargesheet against Congress leader Jagdish Tytler for his alleged role in the killings of three people on November 1, 1984.
The draft bill seeks to amend relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for the proposed law's application in the state.
The Ministry of Home Affairs feels that awarding death penalty to the duo will sour ties with Italy, reports Vicky Nanjappa.
'I want Atiq Ahmed's empire to end, I don't want him to be alive'
Supporting death penalty for hijackers, a parliamentary committee has said capital punishment must be awarded to conspirators and abettors whose actions result in death of hostages or security personnel. At the same time, it raised questions as to whether opportunities for any negotiation or settlement to save lives would be foreclosed if the hijackers knew they would in any case get capital punishment for the offence.
Bhullar was convicted for carrying out a bomb blast in New Delhi outside the All India Youth Congress headquarters in 1993, which claimed nine lives. His mercy plea was rejected in May 2011.
Holding honour killings as a slur on the nation and a barbaric, feudal practice that ought to be stamped out, the Supreme Court on Monday directed courts to view such cases as "rarest of rare" category for awarding death penalty to the convicts.
The plea claimed that Singh was arrested from Rajasthan and brought to Delhi on December 17, 2012, and was not present in the city on December 16, when the crime took place.
In a significant ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday said that underworld don Abu Salem can be tried for offences inviting death penalty even though the Portugal government had laid a pre-condition that he will not be extradited if he was to be awarded capital punishment.
Pakistani-origin American national David Coleman Headley, a Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative charged with criminal conspiracy in the 26/11 terror attacks, now appears to have turned into an informant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to avoid death penalty.
In case of rape of a girl under 16 years, the minimum punishment has been increased from 10 years to 20 years, extendable to imprisonment for rest of life, which means jail term till the convict's "natural life".
Jagadguru Shankaracharya Swamy Shri Nischalananda Saraswati of Puri said death penalty will not end incidents of rape in the country and women should be placed in a higher position in the society to stop such crimes against them.
Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar said the Delhi police would write to the Union home ministry for appropriate changes in the law to invoke the death penalty for rapists.
Far-reaching procedural and institutional reform, and not the death penalty, is needed to tackle the endemic problem of violence against women in India, stated human rights organisation Amnesty International India, after a New Delhi court sentenced to death four men in the December 16 gang-rape case.
Serial killer Chandrakant Jha was on Wednesday sentenced to death by a Delhi court in another case of murder and dumping the body near Tihar Jail after beheading and chopping off body parts of the victim, as his case fell in the 'rarest of rare' category.
The family of the Delhi gang-rape victim on Monday termed the Juvenile Justice Board's decision of ruling the sixth accused in the case as minor as unfortunate and said that they would challenge it in court. "The family would consult legal experts and challenge the matter in the relevant court," the brother of the girl told PTI over the phone from Delhi.
Responding to a discussion during Zero Hour in the Lower House, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said he was falling short of words to condemn the heinous crime.
Pakistan on Tuesday hanged its 100th convict since a moratorium on death penalty was lifted in December last year, prompting rights group Amnesty International to call it as a "shameful milestone".
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