09 July 2005 :

it was reported that the government had decided to bring in amendments to the more-than-a-century-old Indian Penal Code (IPC) which, if approved by Parliament, would eliminate the existing provision of the “death sentence” even “in the rarest of rare” cases. The amended IPC while abolishing capital punishment would seek to turn the existing life-term imprisonment of 14 years into a life-term in the strictest sense of its meaning. “For life-term convicts the only way out of the prison walls will be either to a cemetery or a crematorium as and when the new IPC provisions come into affect,” sources told reporters. On the government’s “direction”, both the home and law ministries have been engaged in “consultations and evolving consensus” with the states and legal and constitutional experts on the subject. “The proposal to abolish the death sentence and make a life-term a term unto death for convicts seeks to serve the twin objectives of pacifying human rights activists and preventing such criminals from coming out of the prison and mixing freely with the mainstream population,” a source was reported as saying.
The government’s argument on the life-term punishment is that it would work as “a minimum deterrent” against incorrigible hardcore criminals in the absence of the death penalty.