Capital punishment in India
Capital punishment in India is a legal penalty for some crimes under the country's main substantive penal legislation, the Indian Penal Code, as well as other laws. Executions are carried out by hanging as the primary method of execution as given under Section 354(5) of the Criminal Code of Procedure, 1973 is "Hanging by the neck until dead", and is awarded only in the 'rarest of cases'. Currently, there are around 488 prisoners on death row in India. The most recent executions in India took place in March 2020, when four of the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder perpetrators were executed at the Tihar Jail in Delhi. History In the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1898 death was the default punishment for murder and required the concerned judges to give reasons in their judgment if they wanted to give life imprisonment instead. By an amendment to the CrPC in 1955, the requirement of written reasons for not imposing the death penalty was removed, reflecting no legislative preference between the two punishments. In 1973, when the CrPC was amended further, life imprisonment became the norm and the death penalty was to be imposed only in exceptional cases, particularly if a