No rape convict hanged in last 15 years in India even as people seek death penalty for rapists
Shams Ur Rehman Alavi
NewsBits.in
BHOPAL: Even as there is a growing demand for capital punishment for rape convicts, the reality is that death penalty is a rarity in India.
Just 3 Indians have been hanged in the last two decades and the last rape convict was executed 15 years ago. Since, then there has been no hanging in cases of rapes in the country.
The figure of rapes recorded in India is in lakhs in this period, yet, there has been not a single instance of hanging a rapist, since 2004. There is definitely anger in the society due to incidents of rapes and sexual violence.
In all, 32,559 cases of rapes were registered in India in the year 2017, reveals the NCRB report. In 93% cases, the accused were known to victims, they were either family friend, employer, neighbour or other known person(s).
After every incident of rape and murder, there are demands for more tough laws. Still, even after Nirbhaya's case, incidents of rapes continue unabated. In states, politicians announced that there would death penalty for rape with minors.
However, the truth is that the figure of rapes in India is so high and practically death penalty is not possible either. After all, nobody is getting hanged for rapes for many many years now. Those hanged in India in the last 15 were involved in cases of terror or natinal security.
In 2004, Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged for rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in West Bengal. Apart from Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani, two more Indians were hanged in the last two decades--Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon. But there has been no hanging at all since 2015.
UPDATE: This article was published in the year 2019. A year later, four persons were hanged. They were serving jail term for several years and had been on death row.
The four men-- Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Singh, Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta were hanged on March 20, 2020. The hanging took place inside the Tihar Jail in Delhi. All of them were accused in the case of a woman onboard a bus in the national capital. This case had had caused nationwide uproar.
People had come to streets after the Delhi gangrape case. Another main accused in this case, Ram Singh, had earlier been arrested and sentenced to death. However, he died by suicide in the jail. The four remaining accused, Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Singh, Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta, were hanged.
