Number of death row prisoners 488, highest in 17 years, says report

The report on annual statistics on death penalty by Project 39A is expected to be released Monday. Project 39A is a criminal law reforms advocacy group at the National Law University, Delhi.

The report suggested that limited functioning of courts due to the pandemic has impacted the priority given to death penalty related cases.

“The limited functioning of appellate courts in both 2020 and 2021 meant fewer appeals of prisoners sentenced to death being decided, and a far greater number of prisoners remaining on death row at the end of the year,” it said.

According to the report, while trial courts imposed a total of 144 death sentences in 2021, high courts decided only 39 matters in the same period. In 2020, high courts decided 31 matters related to death penalty compared to 76 in 2019. The Supreme Court, despite listing death penalty cases on priority in September last year, decided only 6 cases in 2021 compared to 11 in 2020 and 28 in 2019.

The report stated that of the 39 cases involving death penalty decided by high courts, only four resulted in confirmation of the death sentences. While 18 were commuted to life imprisonment, 15 in acquittal of all charges, and two cases were remitted back to the trial court. The report stated that the majority of cases in which trial courts imposed the death sentence involved murder, bucking an increasing trend of awarding death sentence for sexual crimes.