Indian courts handed down at least 64 death sentences last year, but no executions took place, largely as a result of court rulings, new data from Amnesty International shows. Globally, executions fell by a fifth, and two-thirds of the world has abolished the death penalty.
China continues to execute the most people globally – thousands every year, the human rights group said in a new report published early on Wednesday morning - but does not publish any data, classifying it as a state secret. Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia accounted for nearly three-quarters of all of the rest of the world’s executions in 2014. The United States of America executed 35 people, its fewest in 20 years.
In India, which saw the execution of Ajmal Kasab in late 2012 and Afzal Guru in early 2013 after a gap of eight years, several executions were scheduled for 2014, but were not carried out. In January, a landmark Supreme Court ruling laid down guidelines for death sentences, including classifying delay in the disposal of mercy petitions as grounds for commutation, and that mental disability warranted commutation. Information reported by the Death Penalty Research Project of the National Law University in Delhi indicated that 270 people were on death row in various Indian prisons, and eight people had their mercy petitions rejected in 2014.Pakistan lifted a six-year-long moratorium on executions in the wake of the Peshawar school massacre, executing seven people in 2014, Amnesty International reported. It further lifted the moratorium on the hangings of all death row inmates, and not those accused of terrorism alone. As of Tuesday, it had hanged 66 people since lifting the moratorium, and Amnesty estimated that a further 8,000 persons were on death row.
“Governments using the death penalty to tackle crime are deluding themselves. There is no evidence that shows the threat of execution is more of a deterrent to crime than any other punishment,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said in a statement.
Executions were recorded in 22 countries in 2014, nearly half the number from which executions were recorded 20 yeas ago. “The numbers speak for themselves – the death penalty is becoming a thing of the past. The few countries that still execute need to take a serious look in the mirror and ask themselves if they want to continue to violate the right to life, or join the vast majority of countries that have abandoned this ultimate cruel and inhuman punishment,” Mr. Shetty said. In a statement to Parliament last year, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said that his government had no plans to abolish the death penalty.