In recent years, the Supreme Court of India has called for reforms in the implementation of death sentences in the country. It has stressed the need to consider all possible alternatives to the death penalty before imposing it and has held that the death penalty should only be used in the "rarest of rare" cases. But, last year, a report by Project 39A revealed that the trial courts sentenced 165 people to death, the highest in a single year since 2000.
Arup Surendranath, a professor at National Law Univesity, Delhi, and the executive director of Project 39A, joins us in this episode to talk about the rise in death penalty sentencing by trial courts and what the Supreme court's call for reform means.
Hosted and scripted by Utsa Sarmin and Rahel Philipose
Produced by Utsa Sarmin, Rahel Philipose and Shashank Bhargava
Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar