Death Penalty: Revenge Disguised as Justice or Social Necessity?

This research project is aimed at finding answer to the question: whether death penalty is revenge disguised as justice or itself a social necessity of the day? At first, an introduction to the topic is discussed which focuses on death penalty as a mode of punishment and the relevance of the topic per se which is greatly inspired by PinkiAnand's book “Trials of Truth" where she asks this question out to the readers. Following this, the evolution of capital sentencing is traced through the history of mankind, how it has developed from one civilization to another, from one law system to another. Thereafter, an elaborate discourse is provided on the existence of death penalty in the Indian Law System particularly in the Indian Penal Code through a lot of offences in the IPC punishable with death. Following, there has been a discussion on the Constitutional validity of death penalty and whether at all death penalty violates the provisions of the constitution especially the right to life and liberty of individual or not. Thereafter there has been a detailed discussion on how the concept of ‘rarest of the rare’ evolved through the various decisions of the Hon’ble Supreme Court. The research paper finally ends with the answer to the question whether we should continue the practice of death penalty or abolish it in to.