This judgment, delivered by the two learned judges of the Hon’ble Supreme Court, R.F Nariman J. and Chelameswar J. is mainly a landmark because of the procedural obligations it has placed over the judiciary and the government of India regarding cases up for death penalty.
This case was a group of petitions which prayed two things from the two judge bench of the Supreme Court of India:
(1) the hearing of cases in which death sentence has been awarded should be by a Bench of at least three if not five Supreme Court Judges and
(2) the hearing of Review Petitions in death sentence cases should not be by circulation but should only be in open Court, and accordingly Order XL Rule 3 of the Supreme Court Rules, 1966 should be declared to be unconstitutional inasmuch as persons on death row are denied an oral hearing.
The arguments of the petitioners regarding these were:
- Since death penalty seeks a violation of the fundamental right to life of the accused, hence negating all his fundamental rights in a single stroke, much more accuracy and research is required for dealing with such cases. As Justice Bhagwati had once observed, death penalty once final is not revocable. Hence, the final hearing of the penalty before the highest body of judiciary in the country should be at least before a bench of three learned judges of the Supreme Court.
- They refuted the argument of increased workload over the Court by contending that a recent data shows only sixty death penalties per annum are awarded in the country. The Court can afford to handle a round of oral arguments in a number of cases so less.
Observing the practices of the judiciary till now and carefully taking into cognizance the arguments both for and against the matter, the following ratio was laid down by the Supreme Court of India in this case;
Oral hearing is mandatory while deciding the review petition of death sentence cases. Hearing of cases in which death sentence has been awarded should be disposed-off by a Bench of at least three Supreme Court Judges.
Author: Akshay Goel, Hidayatullah National Law University