The Supreme Court of India

INDIA: AT 561, NUMBER OF DEATH ROW PRISONERS AT A 19-YEAR HIGH

February 11, 2024:

The number of prisoners on death row has risen to 561 in 2023, which is the highest in 19 years. Previously, the highest death row population was 563 in 2004, based on NCRB data on prisons. The increase could be due to a combination of reasons - low disposable rate by appellate courts and the propensity of trial courts to award death penalties. According to the annual report on death penalty in India by Project 39A at Delhi's National Law University, trial courts imposed 120 death sentences in 2023 while the rest are pending from earlier cases. Though the number of death penalties has come down - 156 were given in 2016 - 303 cases involving 488 prisoners were pending before high courts at the end of 2023. This is the highest since 2016.
In a trend continuing since 2019, crimes involving sexual offences formed most death penalty cases in trial courts. About 64 people (53%) were sentenced to death for sexual offences, including rape and murder in 2023. This is up from 27 prisoners given death in 2016. In 75% of cases, courts awarded death penalty when the case involved rape and murder of a victim below 12 years of age.
Importantly, 2023 marked the lowest rate of death sentence confirmations by appellate courts since 2000, with only one confirmation by Karnataka HC. Acquittals dominated outcomes in death penalty cases at appellate courts in 2023.
The report says, "The Supreme Court and high courts raised grave concerns over the shoddy nature of investigations and poor quality of evidence relied on by trial courts to convict and sentence persons to death. The SC continued the trend from previous years by relying on jail conduct and psychiatric evaluation reports of the accused to commute death sentences of three prisoners in two cases.”
In contrast to growing concern in appellate courts over the lack of information about the accused at sentencing, trial courts in 2023 continued to overwhelmingly impose death sentences (in 87% of cases) without eliciting necessary reports on mitigating circumstances from the state. These figures indicate a widening gulf between the efforts of appellate courts to improve the institutional capacity of administering the death penalty, and the persisting capital sentencing crisis at trial courts. In 2022, SC had referred the issue of framing guidelines for effective, meaningful sentencing in capital cases to a Constitution bench.