Gender Bias in Execution of Death Penalty in Post-Independence India: A Reason for Abolition

In post-independence India conviction of women with capital punishment is considerable, however, the execution of death penalty on women is nil. This portrays the discrimination when it comes to actual execution of capital punishment, or in other words the fact that State has incidentally denied equality before law on the basis of sex. When the award of punishment is not uniform and a class of persons are consciously filtered out from its imposition, the continuance of such a flawed concept not only questions the very pillars of a legal system but ingrains ideas of discomfort and scepticism among general public. The paper, while evaluating facts and statistics supporting the notion, will analyse the extra-legal factors responsible for a predominantly patriarchal and paternalistic attitude of the judiciary and finally establish why gender bias should also be a ground for abolition of death penalty.