According to the data of Death Penalty Research Project of National Law University, 5 thousand people
have been sentenced to death since independence in the country, but not all of them have been hanged. The
sentence of many of them was commuted to life imprisonment and only about 700 of these people were
hanged after independence.
The last hanging was given 3 years ago
The first hanging after India’s independence was carried out on 9 september 1947. This hanging was done in
the Central Jail of Jabalpur. The last hanging in india for the Nirbhaya gangrape convicts in 2020 was on
March 20, 2020.
These four people cannot be hanged in India
In india, children below 15 years of age, pregnant women, mentally challenged, criminals suffering from
incurable diseases and people above 70 years of age have been exempted from death sentence.
90 countries abolished death penalty
Since 1976, 90 countries of the world have abolished death penalty for all types of crimes, but apart from
india, there is still a provision for death penalty in many other countries including America, Japan, China,
Iran, saudi arabia and Iraq. . In these countries, criminals are given death in different ways.
In december 2022, in the United Nations General Assembly, 125 countries around the world voted in favor
of banning the death penalty. Although india voted against it. A draft resolution presented in the UN Human
Rights Council to ban the death penalty in 2021 was also opposed by the indian government. Despite the
provision of death penalty in india, very few criminals are given death sentence. If we look at the data from
2000 till now, only 8 criminals have been given death sentence in 23 years.
