New Delhi
Over four years since lawyer Rishi Malhotra moved the Supreme Court seeking the striking down of the mandatory death penalty provision under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 in a particular offence, there is finally some forward movement in the PIL.
What Is The Offence Being Referred To?
Loosely put, the Act stipulates a death sentence only for a non-Scheduled Caste or non-Scheduled Tribe person who falsely implicates a member of the SC/ST community in a case that results in the latter’s conviction and execution.
To quote Section 3(2)(i) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989:
(2) Whoever, not being a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe:- i) gives or fabricates false evidence intending thereby to cause, or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby cause, any member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe to be convicted of an offence which is capital by the law for the time being in force shall be punished with imprisonment for life and with fine; and if an innocent member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe be convicted and executed in consequence of such false or fabricated evidence, the person who gives or fabricate such false evidence, shall be punished with death.
What Does The PIL State?
The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in 2019 stated that the said law is ultra vires of the Constitution and against the fundamental tenets of Constitutional laws.
The advocate told the court that the provision is “manifestly arbitrary, disproportionate, excessive, unreasonable, unjust, unfair, harsh, unusual and cruel”. He requested the Supreme Court to strike down the provision.
Citing various other sections which were quashed or amended by the court earlier, the advocate said: “As and when an occasion had arisen where the mandatory imposition of death penalty is called in question in different statutes, either this court by exercising its Constitutional powers of judicial review has struck down those provisions by holding it to be unconstitutional and void or the legislature itself has amended those provisions by removing the mandatory imposition of death penalty.”
His plea further said: “The legislature cannot make relevant circumstances irrelevant, depriving the courts of their legitimate jurisdiction to exercise discretion in not imposing death sentence in appropriate cases and compel them to shut their eyes to mitigating circumstances and inflict upon them the dubious and unconscionable duty of imposing a preordained sentence of death.”
The PIL also referred to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, which initially provided for mandatory death sentence and was amended in 2014 by the legislature itself and further provided for an option of awarding death sentence or any other imprisonment as specified in the Act.
What’s The Supreme Court’s Take On It?
Hearing the PIL on February 13, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Surya Kant and K V Viswanathan dwelled on the “discrimination” that an SC/ST member committing the same offence will not be awarded death penalty.
“Suppose, false evidence is given by a SC/ST member which causes the execution of a SC/ST member? Then no death penalty. What is the reasonable classification here?” Justice Surya Kant questioned.
Justice Kant then asked the Attorney General R Venkataramani to give a note on “why there should a discrimination between SC/ST and non-SC/ST person under the legal person if the offence is the same”.
The SC also asked the Attorney General to inform it if anybody has been prosecuted under the abovementioned penal provision.
The apex court then asked Malhotra if there was any single instance of conviction under this provision. The lawyer replied that he did not have data regarding that.
With no immediate data available, the Supreme Court asked the Attorney General to try to get information and submit a short note on the issue. “Is there any single instance where conviction has taken place. Has any conviction ever taken place? Can you use your good offices to find out any prosecution under this provision,” the bench sought to know from the Attorney General.
The apex court also suggested that the Parliament could consider amending the death penalty provision to establish a prolonged fixed jail term instead.
A longer jail term, as envisioned in the Supreme Court’s Swamy Shraddananda ruling, could be imposed beyond the usual 14-year limit for remission eligibility or even life imprisonment.
Come May 14, the date of next hearing, information on the two queries of the apex court will be known.
