India

COUNTRY

Country's Death Penalty Landscape: Unique to India, there is a trend regarding the use of the death penalty at the trial court and the Supreme Court level, and the wide disparity in compliance with the procedural and substantive safeguards. One of the ways in which the evidentiary standard during conviction was not enough evidence, incorrectly appreciated evidence, or not placing evidence of their innocence has led to DP sentencing.

Country's Key Death Penalty Trends: A form of effective defence also entails determining the appropriateness of a sentence. Similar to former British colonies such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Indian courts do weigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances on mental health and forensic grounds. Case to highlight are below. Other key grounds for mitigation are juvenility and family situation/life history as seen in these two instances which can be found in the database.

Country Geolocation

Latitude: 20.5937

Longitude: 78.9629

Contributing Organisations

Kind of Cases Contributed: Case Briefs which are being uploaded are prisoners that are directly represented by us.

Credibility of Contributing Organisation: The Square Circle Clinic (TSCC) is a criminal justice initiative at NALSAR University of Law that works on various issues within the criminal justice system including death penalty, forensics, mental health, legal aid and prevention of torture. We are keenly interested in efforts that seek more transparency and accountability on matters relating to the death penalty. Resource sharing through the database project is an important aspect towards achieving this goal.

Formerly, P39A (Aug 2014 - March 2024) under NLUD, TSCC deployes rigorous empirical research and approached death penalty in a comprehensive way including prisoner's mental health. We are the only organisation that offers mitigation support for capital defence.

Supporting files