Constitutionality of the Capital Punishment in India: An Analysis

Capital punishment or the death penalty has always been a topic of contradiction not only in India but also in several developed countries. In India, the motive for providing punishment is based on two aspects; the first is that the offender should suffer for the pain and injury he/she cast upon the victim and another motive is to discourage others from committing wrongs by sanctioning punishments. This paper focuses on capital punishment in India which is also known as the death penalty which is awarded by the court in very rare cases. Furthermore, this paper also knows the history of the advent of the death penalty and probes the constitutional validity of capital punishment in the context of the Indian judiciary. The study aims to identify the constitutional validity of the death sentence and to understand the value of differing judicial opinions on its constitutional validity.