After 22 death sentences in 4 months, 97 murder cases moved from UP judge’s court

In a comment to wire service Press Trust of India, government counsel Kuldeep Kumar said that the case involving offences punishable with death or life imprisonment, were transferred from the fast-track court headed by Diwakar to the court of District and Sessions Judge Virendra Kumar Singh.

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The Indian Express had on August 17 reported that Between April 6 and July 17 – barely 100 days – Judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar, Additional District and Sessions Judge presiding over Fast Track Court No. 3 in Muzaffarnagar, sentenced 17 people to death across seven separate murder trials, out of 22 accused.

Under Sections 407 to 412 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, no death sentence passed by a Sessions Court can be carried out until the High Court confirms it. So, all death sentences awarded by the Muzaffarnagar trial court will go to the Allahabad High Court for confirmation, alongside any appeals the convicts file independently.

Death penalty in India

India retains the death penalty in law, but its use is circumscribed by strict judicial standards and layered procedural safeguards. The Supreme Court has consistently held that capital punishment may be imposed only in the “rarest of rare” cases where the crime is of exceptional gravity and life imprisonment is deemed inadequate.

Even when a trial court awards the death sentence, it does not automatically attain finality. Under the Code of Criminal Procedure, every death sentence must be confirmed by the concerned High Court, which re-examines both the conviction and the sentence.

The death row punishment remains deeply contentious in India as those in favour of capital punishment argue that it serves as a necessary deterrent for heinous crimes and provides justice to victims’ families. In contrast, some reject this idea on the grounds of a lack of conclusive evidence that death row punishment deters crime more effectively than life imprisonment.

21 women on death row in India

Of the 571 people on death row in India, 21 are women, with their cases spanning from terrorism to familial violence and from honour killings to other heinous crimes. While four of them have remained on death row for over a decade, nearly all await the conclusion of their cases.

These women come from different states, different circumstances, and different moments in time. While the oldest case dates back to the 2003 blasts near Mumbai’s Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar when Fehmida Sayyed was arrested, the most recent capital punishments were handed down just last year, in 2025.