-The Hindu With increasing demands for execution of Parliament attack accused Afzal Guru, the Amnesty International has urged President Pranab Mukherjee to immediately halt all Death sentences and go with the internationally accepted principle of “right to life”. In a letter to Mr. Mukherjee, Amnesty International India Chief Executive G. Ananthapadmanaban urged him to commute all Death sentences into terms of imprisonment, halt further executions and establish an official moratorium on executions...

-The Times of India As many as 477 convicts awarded Death sentence are awaiting hanging in various jails across the country, the government told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. Maharashtra, which last month hanged LeT terrorist Ajmal Kasab in a secret operation after President Pranab Mukherjee rejected his mercy petition, has 50 convicts in its jails awaiting hanging, putting it third on the list of states with maximum number of convicts awaiting...

-The Hindu There is a need to identify cases in which the courts might have erred in applying the Bachan Singh principle that limits the imposition of the death penalty The Supreme Court’s five-judge Constitution Bench judgment in Bachan Singh (1980) is the source of contemporary death penalty jurisprudence in India. Its major contribution was to limit the imposition of death penalty to the rarest of rare crimes, and for laying down...

-The Hindu From illegal detentions to wrong convictions, India’s terror prosecution is in dire need of attitudinal overhaul Only those condemned to await their own deaths will know what it is to be suddenly blessed with the elixir of life. On November 22, two Kashmiri men found themselves lifted out of the darkness of their death row cells into light, life and liberty after the Delhi High Court set aside their convictions...

-The Times of India Days after a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court said it was time to revisit jurisprudence behind imposition of death penalty, the apex court asked the Union government why provisions in some laws mandating compulsory death penalty as punishment be not struck down as unconstitutional. The question from a bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranajana Desai put additional solicitor general Siddharth Luthra in a piquant position for...