Death Penalty Dilemma: Balancing Justice and Human Right

Introduction

Upholding justice is the primary task of the courts vested upon by the law but often judges face themselves in the dilemma between justice and right, while both are to faces of same coin but certain situation arise when one of these have to be chosen as the nature of justice is dynamic while the right on other hands are pretty absolute. This conflict is escalated to its peak when it comes to the death penalty, most aggravated form of punishment awarded only to those who are understood not to withstand societal norms and rules and may further harm the society if set at liberty or would defeat the end of justice if pronounced any other punishment other than death. As rightly evolved in the Bachan Singh v State of Punjab, the doctrine of rarest of the rare which ultimately propounds that the death sentence should only be awarded on in cases where the crime if so heinous that it shakes the collective conscience of the society.

There are further a number of cases in Indian law that have asked this question repeatedly as to whether grant of death penalty is violation of article 21 or not and to which courts have answered that such award is not in the violation of right to life but to uphold the justice and meet the criminal the fate he has chosen by doing that kind of act.

We will further deal in the concept of death penalty and analyze as to how such punishment even after it takes the life of a person is not violation of the right that iss guaranteed in Union Declarations of Human Right at the global stage and incorporated in the Indian constitution article 21.

Death penalty-

Death penalty refers to the punishment inflicted to a person’s death for any crime he has done by the authority of state. It is synonymous with the capital punishment or death sentence. In most nations including Indian the practice of sentence to prisoners on death row is done by hanging except in the court martial in army. Various penal provision of Indian penal code now Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita provides for offences in which death sentence may be awarded by court.

In furterene to this debate the human right refers to those rights that are specifically mentioned in the universal declaration of human right UDHR 1948 that is recognized globally and for the definition, the protection of human right act of 1993 defines it as-

“Human Rights” means the rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Constitution or embodied in the International Covenants and enforceable by courts in India; So simply human right is right that is acquired naturally to a human being just by the fact that he is born a human, this does not attaches itself with the boundary of jurisdiction meaning that human right is available to everyone irrespective of nationality or religion or any other race or caste.

The right to life is the human right guaranteed under article 3 of the UDHR which says everyone has right to life, guaranteeing, against the state, that no one should be killed or deprived of his life. This right, according to huma rights, extends even to the criminals and that they also have the right to life as the state has no authority to take one’s life, echoing the same concept of right established under article 21.

Article 21 and death penalty

The Indian court has death with cases that asked the constitutionality of death penalty as if whether it is violative of article 21. The first case in this regard was of Jagmohan singh v sate of UP wherein the question regarding the constitutionality of capital sentence was put before supreme court where the court decided that since the only deciding factors as to check the constitutionality of a death sentence must meet the given ground in article 21 that requires that procedure that is established by law and since the sentence is awarded after a thorough trial it is very much constitutional.

The court in case of Bachan singh v state of Punjab that this award must be given only in the rarest of rare cases and that each case must be evaluated on its merit. This doctrine serves as a human rights safeguard by shifting the legal presumption from death to life, as was earlier before Jagmohan judgment where death was rule and life was exception mandating that the death penalty be treated as an absolute exception rather than a standard punishment. Effectively, the doctrine acts as a barrier against arbitrary state- sanctioned killing, asserting that unless a crime is so uniquely heinous that it shocks the “collective conscience” and provides life imprisonment as not an option, the fundamental right to life must prevail. This high evidentiary and moral threshold aligns Indian jurisprudence with global human rights standards, which emphasize that a civilized legal system should prioritize rehabilitation over irreversible retribution.

• Manner of commission of murder (extreme brutality).
• Motive (depravity).
• Anti-social or socially abhorrent nature of the
• Magnitude of the crime .
• Personality of the victim

This approach of the court clearly shows the intent to limit the death penalty and uphold the right to life of the person, evolving since the Jagmohan judgment clearly by redefining the grounds on which the death sentence could be made upon. This intent of court is clearly seen in the case of Mithu v state of Punjab where the section 303 of ipc as ten was the leading penal law, provided that if any convict, on life sentence already committed murder he would be awarded the death sentence mandatorily unlike in other provision where the court had discretion to choose between the life and death, this one clearly did not.

The Court ruled that prescribing a mandatory death sentence for life convicts who commit murder was savage and arbitrary as it took from the judiciary its essential power to exercise discretion in choosing life and death. By making death the only punishment, the law prevented judges from considering other relevant circumstances, such as the motive or the possibility of the offender’s reform, which directly contradicted the fair, just, and reasonable procedure established in the Maneka Gandhi case. Moreover, it was found that there was a lack of intelligible differentia or logic in treating the convict differently from others. Ultimately, the Court held that the legislature cannot pre-determine a case to be the rarest of rare by default.

Conclusion

The “Death Penalty Dilemma” is not merely a legal debate but a reflection of a society’s moral evolution. As analyzed through the trajectory of Indian jurisprudence from the total constitutionality in Jagmohan Singh to the restrictive “Rarest of Rare” doctrine in Bachan Singh and the striking down of mandatory sentencing in Mithu it is evident that the judiciary has consistently moved toward a human-rights-centric interpretation of Article

By aligning domestic law with the universal spirit of the UDHR, the courts have ensured that the right to life is not a gift from the State, but a fundamental attribute of human dignity that can only be extinguished under the most exceptional and scrutinized circumstances.

Ultimately, the balance between justice and human rights is maintained by recognizing that while the State has a duty to punish heinous acts, it also has an obligation to remain “fair, just, and reasonable.” The shift from “death as a rule” to “death as an absolute exception” proves that the Indian legal system prioritizes rehabilitation and the rule of law over the primitive impulse of pure retribution. As we move further into the 21st century, the dilemma continues to challenge us: a civilized nation is defined not by the violence it can inflict on its most depraved members, but by the restraint it exercises to uphold the sanctity of life, even for those who have disregarded it.