Munmun Kaur
Published On: January 31, 2022 at 15:05 IST
As per the sixth edition of the Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report which is a report by research organization Project 39A of National Law University, Delhi highlighted that Trial Courts all over India handed down 144 death sentences in the year 2021.
This number is twice the number of death sentences imposed during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which was 77. The report further provided that Appellate Courts decided far fewer matters than previous years, with the High Courts deciding 39 matters (76 in 2019) and the Supreme Court deciding 6 (28 in 2019). Out of the 39 cases decided by High Courts, four resulted in confirmation of the death sentences, 18 in commutation to life imprisonment, 15 in an acquittal of all charges, and two cases were remitted to the trial court. The Supreme Court did not confirm any death sentences in 2021
As per the report, in 2020, sexual offences continued to dominate capital sentencing in Trial Courts, with 54.21% of the Cases that led to a death sentence involving sexual offences.
The 5 states where the maximum number of death sentences were imposed in 2021 were Uttar Pradesh (34), Bihar (27), Tamil Nadu (15), Andhra Pradesh (13), and Odisha (9). The 5 states with the highest death row population as on December 31, 2021, were Uttar Pradesh (86), Maharashtra (41), West Bengal (38), Bihar (37) and Madhya Pradesh (37).
Further, 2021 saw the highest number of prisoners on death row at the end of the year since 2016 at 488, an increase of nearly 21% from 2020. When compared with data from the Prison Statistics of India reports released by the National Crime Records Bureau, this is the highest the death row population has been since 2004, when it was 563.