India’s broken criminal justice system cannot support the death penalty

Three courts found six innocent men guilty of a heinous crime, brought them to the brink of execution. In this story, even our highest court upheld their guilt and death sentence and such a grave error must trigger the moral honesty to accept that we are playing with fire by keeping the death penalty in such a system.

jailed men released after 16 years, Supreme Court, Supreme Court order reversed, A K Sikri, S Abdul Nazeer, 2006 supreme court judgement, india news, indian express — Our criminal justice system has a very low rate of conviction. And at the same time, nearly 75 per cent of our prison population is made of undertrials who spend long periods in prison without ever being found guilty. (Illustration by C R Sasikumar)

After having spent most of their 16 years of incarceration on death row, Ankush Shinde, Rajya Shinde, Raju Shinde, Ambadas Shinde, Bapu Shinde and Surya were acquitted and ordered to be released from Yerawada Central Prison by the Supreme Court on March 5. This tragedy was made possible by the fact that three courts — the Nashik Sessions Court, the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court — between June 2003 and April 2009 had found them guilty and sentenced them to death. However, now in 2019, the SC has taken a closer look at the evidence and set them free while ordering an inquiry against the investigating officer for framing the six men.