As many as 561 inmates are on death row in India, marking the highest number in two decades, according to a report released today.
According to Kashmir Media Service, this represents a 45.71% increase in such inmates since 2015. The eighth edition of the ‘Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report’, published by Project 39A at National Law University, Delhi, reveals that trial courts imposed 120 death sentences in 2023.
The report highlights that in March 2023, President of India rejected one mercy petition in a case involving the kidnapping, rape and murder of a minor in 2008. Currently, there are 488 death row prisoners awaiting judgment from the high courts.
The Supreme Court acquitted four prisoners in three death penalty appeals, remanded two death penalty cases to the trial court and the high court, and commuted the death sentences of three death row prisoners.
The report emphasizes that at the end of 2023, 120 death sentences were imposed by trial courts, with a total of 561 prisoners living under a sentence of death in India. This makes 2023 the year with the highest number of prisoners on death row in nearly two decades, and the second-highest since the turn of the century, according to the National Crime Record Bureau’s Prison Statistics Reports. The year 2023 also witnessed a 45.71% increase in the death row population since 2015.
These figures highlight a widening gap between the efforts of appellate courts to improve the institutional capacity for administering the death penalty and the persisting capital sentencing crisis at trial courts.
According to data, there were 541 and 490 inmates on death row at the end of 2022 and 2021, respectively, with 167 and 146 death sentences awarded in 2022 and 2021.—KMS
