Supreme Court rejects plea to replace hanging with lethal injection

The Supreme Court dismissed a plea seeking to replace hanging with lethal injection and other methods. It said the Centre may still review whether an alternative can reduce pain while preserving dignity.

In Short

• Court allows Centre to review execution methods with expert body
• Plea sought less painful options like lethal injection or shooting
• Centre defended hanging as quick and less painful in affidavit

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition that sought to end the current practice of executing death row convicts by hanging and replace it with what the plea described as less painful methods, including intravenous lethal injection.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, however, said its verdict would not stop the Centre from carrying out a comprehensive review of the existing method of execution through an expert body. The court said such a review could examine whether any alternative method better meets the constitutional objective of minimising unnecessary pain while preserving the dignity of the condemned prisoner.

The bench delivered its verdict on a plea filed in 2017 by senior advocate Rishi Malhotra, who had sought the removal of hanging as the method of execution from the statute. The petition had asked for the abolition of hanging and its replacement with less painful methods such as "intravenous lethal injection, shooting, electrocution or gas chamber".

During the arguments, Malhotra had said that at least an option should be given to a condemned prisoner on whether he wanted hanging or lethal injection as the mode of execution. In March 2023, the Supreme Court said it might consider setting up a committee of experts to examine whether execution by hanging was proportionate and less painful, and had sought "better data" from the Centre on issues related to the mode of execution.

The top court had also made it clear that it could not direct the legislature to adopt a particular mode of sentencing condemned convicts. In 2018, the Centre strongly supported the legal provision that a death row convict would only be hanged to death and told the bench that other modes of execution, such as lethal injections and firing, were not less painful.

In its counter affidavit filed by the joint secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Centre said death by hanging was "quick, simple" and free from anything that would "unnecessarily sharpen the poignancy of the prisoner". The affidavit was filed in response to the plea, which had referred to the 187th Report of the Law Commission advocating the removal of the present mode of execution from the statute.

With the plea now dismissed, the Supreme Court has left open the possibility of a wider review by the Centre on whether any alternative method should be considered.

- Ends