Life Imprisonment as the New Death Penalty: A Critical Analysis of India’s Sentencing Trends

Overuse of life imprisonment and rarity of death penalty has been a highly dubious issue. In Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, 1980 the principle that death penalty should be imposed in rarest of rare cases was established. The question that creeped in was that whether in future this would lead to the total abolishment of the capital punishment and give rise to overuse of life imprisonment. The issue evolves in various dimensions and that is what we are going to explore. The evolution of capital punishment and it is seen as a compensation in proportion to the crime committed towards the victim. It is seen as justice to the victim as in Mukesh and Another v. State for NCT of Delhi and others, 2012 four of the accused were hanged in 2020 in Tihar jail. Moving ahead we will look into the current situation regarding this issue. We will explore the reasons behind the declining and rarity of capital punishment and that there are also situations of wrongful convictions, deterrence and ethical implications of taking life. Further, potential consequences of overuse of life imprisonment and how it has deteriorated the living conditions in various jails in India and the possibility of rehabilitation being overlooked. We will explore a few points as to resort to consideration of alternative approaches.