India Among Few Nations Where Death Penalty Increases Considerably

BANGALORE: The annual report of Amnesty International on the use of the death penalty has revealed an increase in the number of executions worldwide. Around 778 executions known to have been carried out in 2013, compared to 682 in 2012, the report said. Coming to Indian pretext on the death penalty, most of the executions in this country are not announced prior to being carried out, neither to the public nor even to the families and lawyers of the culprit.

According to the report, India enforced 72 of such death sentences in the year 2013 alone. Also, at least 400 people are believed to be on death row at the end of 2013. The mercy petitions of 18 other prisoners in 2013 rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee emerge as the most rejections by any president in nearly 25 years, said Amnesty.

"In India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and South Sudan, prisoners were not informed of their forthcoming execution, nor were their lawyers and families," the report said. "In Botswana, India and Nigeria, and in some cases in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the bodies of executed prisoners were not returned to their families for burial," It added.

The organization in its latest report revealed executions by beheading, electrocution, firing squad, hanging and lethal injection rose by almost 15 percent in 2013. Globally, China with 778 death penalties; it turns out as the nation with the most number of executions followed by Iran with at least 369 put to death by the state, followed by Iraq (169), Saudi Arabia (79), and the United States (39).

Salil Shetty, Amnesty International's secretary general said, "The virtual killing sprees we saw in countries like Iran and Iraq were shameful. But those states who cling to the death penalty are on the wrong side of history and are, in fact, growing more and more isolated," reports TOI.
"The long-term trend is clear—death penalty is becoming a thing of the past. We urge all governments who still kill in the name of justice to impose a moratorium on death penalty immediately, with a view to abolishing it," added Shetty.

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