Death Penalty (India)

Debate between Fabian Hamilton and Virendra Sharma

Thursday 28th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to contribute. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing this debate about this important issue of human rights and dignity. The Kesri Lehar petition has raised an essential debate about the use and abolition of the death penalty all over the world, but particularly in India, for many reasons. I have received an abundance of letters and correspondence from my constituents, irrespective of their faith and community, a majority of whom still have strong links with India and are dismayed by its continued use of this outdated, cruel and inhumane method of punishment. Just for clarification, I have the largest Sikh electorate—21.6%—in my constituency, so I have a moral authority to speak on their behalf on this matter.

The universal declaration of human rights, adopted by India, recognises the right to live and the right to be free from subjection to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. By keeping the death penalty, India goes against the fundamental rights that it has agreed to. It is one of only 58 countries to retain the death penalty, and one of only 20 to have applied the death penalty in practice in recent years. It cannot be acceptable for a democracy such as India to keep practising this unfair punishment.

[Fabian Hamilton]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on being the representative of the largest number of Sikh residents anywhere in the United Kingdom. His constituency is well known for that. Does he agree that a petition such as the one that has been presented to me and my colleagues will add to the pressure on the Government of India, because it is signed not only by Sikh community members but by non-Sikhs? Does he agree that organisations such as the Sikh Federation (UK) can persuade people to coalesce around this cause and have an extremely loud voice in the UK for the abolition of the death penalty in India?

[Mr Sharma]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend.

We cannot always assume that the judicial system is faultless. Therefore, using death, an irrevocable act, as a punishment for a crime, puts the system at risk of punishing the innocent irreversibly. There have been examples in the past of wrongful executions. It was the case of Timothy John Evans that, among others, contributed to the abolition of the death penalty in this country, after a long campaign by Labour MP Sydney Silverman. Evans was falsely convicted of murdering his wife and infant daughter, sentenced to capital punishment and hanged in 1950. It was three years later that the police discovered multiple bodies in the flat of downstairs neighbour and serial killer, John Christie, and realised their mistake. Can it really be just to execute a person who, while at the time of conviction is believed guilty, might well be innocent?

It is the mark of a modern civilised society that it does not tolerate torture and admits that a death sentence is not an appropriate way to respond to criminality. As the world’s largest democracy, India should adhere to these precepts. Every human being has an inalienable right to live; sentencing a person to death goes against that principle. The state and the judicial system cannot deprive an individual of the value of their life. Taking the life of an individual is also hugely inconsistent with the values that Indian culture prides itself and is based on—fairness and equality.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is believed to have said, “To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not justice.” I agree: justice cannot be provided with a reciprocal sentence. The justice system cannot proclaim, on the one hand, to condemn the act of killing and, on the other, exact punishment with death. This also establishes an inappropriate link between the state and violence, thus brutalising society and, to a degree, legitimising state violence. It is also abhorrent to note that there are still countries that hand capital sentences to individuals on the basis of their religious beliefs. We should not tolerate the existence of the death penalty to punish those with different spiritual values or beliefs.

I would finally like to point out that, while there has been much justified consternation and outcry over the recent executions in India itself, unfortunately a growing number of voices in India have called for those men responsible for the brutal attack and rape of the young Damini to be hanged. I have spoken many times in this Chamber about my sadness and dismay at her tragic death, and I am heartened to hear calls for justice on her behalf. However, the death penalty is in no case justice: it is simply revenge. What India needs now is to reform the law and justice system to address the many underlying issues which perpetuate this endemic cycle of violence against women and girls, not to blindly apply capital punishment to the perpetrators.

As the Kesri Lehar petition states, I encourage the Indian Government to

“sign and ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the UN Charter against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”.

As the world’s largest democracy and a multicultural, multi-religious and secular country, India should be a leader in the defence of human rights and fundamental rights, and abolish the death penalty, which taints its long history of peace-making.