Death penalty at the Indian supreme court: reframing the reform agenda

This article argues that the concerns highlighted by the existing literature on the unprincipled nature of capital sentencing at Indian trial courts also extend to the Supreme Court of India. Both display significant doctrinal deviations from the sentencing framework laid down 44 years ago in Bachan Singh v State of Punjab. The existing scholarship has attributed this to Bachan Singh’s own lack of normative clarity. Recent reform efforts focus on procedural issues while ignoring the deep normative confusion regarding the substantive principles that ought to inform the evaluation of sentencing materials in capital cases. This article attempts to (re)articulate these principles based on a proper reading of Bachan Singh, an exercise that the Supreme Court has undertaken unsatisfactorily over the years. It also aims to foreground the problems of substance (in addition to those of process) as part of the judicial discourse developing around capital sentencing reform in India.