The Supreme Court on Wednesday scheduled October 8 for hearing the Centre’s plea seeking the formulation of “victim and society-centric” guidelines in heinous crimes that attract the death penalty.
The matter was placed before a bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, and N.V. Anjaria. The Centre had moved the top court in January 2020, contending that the existing framework under the 2014 judgment in Shatrughan Chauhan v. Union of India was “accused and convict-centric,” leaving the interests of victims and society unaddressed.
In January 2020, the apex court had agreed to examine the Centre’s application and sought responses from stakeholders involved in the 2014 case, which had laid down guidelines concerning the rights of death row convicts during and after trial. The court had clarified that the conviction and sentence in the Shatrughan Chauhan case itself would remain unaffected.
The Centre, in its application, argued that convicts in heinous crimes often exploit legal and constitutional remedies indefinitely, thereby delaying executions and aggravating the trauma of victims’ families. It sought a stricter framework to balance the rights of convicts with the rights of victims and society at large.
According to the Centre, the 2014 guidelines were heavily skewed in favour of the accused, ignoring “irreparable mental trauma, agony, and derangement of the victims and their family members, the collective conscience of the nation, and the deterrent effect” of capital punishment.
The plea specifically cited the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape-murder case, where the executions of the four convicts were delayed for months due to the successive filing of review, curative, and mercy petitions. To avoid such delays, the Centre urged the court to impose a seven-day limit for carrying out executions after the issuance of a black warrant.
The Supreme Court noted that the Shatrughan Chauhan case had already attained finality, with both review and curative petitions dismissed. However, it agreed to consider whether the guidelines require modification to ensure a victim and society-oriented approach, without diluting the rights of the accused.
The upcoming hearing on October 8 is expected to weigh these competing concerns—between the constitutional safeguards available to convicts on death row and the need for speedy justice to address the anguish of victims and reinforce public confidence in the justice system.
