Rishi Malhotra, a lawyer, had petitioned the Supreme Court asking it to issue directions banning what he called the “cruel” method of capital punishment in India, which is death by hanging.

The apex court’s bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud on Friday (November 10) granted four weeks to the petitioner to file a counter affidavit.  The petition has asked for death sentences to be given through lethal injections instead.

The PIL is related to the death sentence given by courts in India by hanging under Section 354 (5) of CrPC. The Section states: “When any person is sentenced to death, the sentence shall direct that he be hanged by the neck till he is dead.”

The PIL had urged other alternatives for death penalty. According to the petitioner, the law commission in its 187th report had categorically said that hanging is a barbaric, cruel method to execute somebody so certainly this undermines the line of argument of law commission.

On the previous hearing, the bench had said: “Prima facie we observe… the legislature can think of some other mode by which a convict facing the death sentence should die in peace but not in pain.”

—India Legal Bureau