SC to Hear Plea on Replacing Hanging with Alternative Execution Methods on January 21

The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it would hear arguments on a plea to remove the current method of hanging death row inmates from the statute on January 21.

An appeal to abolish the current practice of hanging death row inmates and replace it with less painful procedures, including "intravenous lethal injection, shooting, electrocution or gas chamber", was being heard by a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta.

Attorney General R Venkataramani asked the bench to postpone the case until January 2026.

"This has been hanging like hanging," senior advocate Rishi Malhotra, who had filed the petition in 2017, said.

Venkataramani said, "Nobody is going to be hanged now. There is no worry at all".

Malhotra said the Attorney General had earlier told the court that the Centre was considering the appointment of a committee to review the issues sought to be raised.

"I am told some proceedings have happened, but I am not sure whether they have yielded any result. Let me pursue that matter and come and report to the court," Venkataramani said.

The bench scheduled a hearing for January 21 of the following year.

The Supreme Court stated that the government's unwillingness to change is the issue during the plea hearing on October 15.

The Centre's statement that it might not be "very feasible" to allow death row inmates to select lethal injection as a method of execution preceded the observation.

Malhotra had stated that a condemned prisoner should at least be given the choice of whether to be executed by hanging or by lethal injection.

The Supreme Court stated in March 2023 that it would consider forming an expert committee to assess whether hanging death row inmates was a reasonable and less agonising method of execution. The court also requested "better data" from the Centre on matters related to the method of execution.

However, the bench had made it clear that it could not order the legislature to use a specific method of sentencing convicted felons.

In 2018, the Centre told the bench that other forms of execution, including shooting and fatal injections, were as horrific and vehemently backed a law that stipulated that a death row inmate would only be hanged.

The counter affidavit, filed by the joint secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, had said that death by hanging was "quick, simple" and free from anything that would "unnecessarily sharpen the poignancy of the prisoner".

The affidavit was filed in response to the PIL, which referred to the 187th Report of the Law Commission advocating the removal of the present mode of execution from the statute.