Capital Punishment

Death sentence has been used as a weapon of retributive justice for centuries by societies. It is a mode of public vengeance as compared to the private vengeance. Death sentence helps in quenching the feeling of revenge underlying in the hearts of private individuals and hence, preventing further acts of crime.
Death sentence is also a mode of deterrent punishment as it serves in instilling a fear in the minds of others harboring a desire to commit any similar offence.
In India, capital punishment is used only in the rarest cases, where the crime is so heinous that it cannot be expected that the wrongdoer can ever be reformed and the act in itself draws the most frightful feelings in the minds of the public at large.
Offences punishable with death sentence under the Indian Penal Code:
(1) Waging war against the Government- Section 121
(2) Abetment of mutiny- Section 132
(3) Giving or fabricating false evidence leading to procure one's conviction for capital punishment- Section 194
(4) Murder- Section 302
(5) Murder by a person undergoing a term of life imprisonment- Section 303
(6) Abetment of suicide by a child or insane person- Section 305
(7) Attempt to muder by a life convict- Section 307
(8) Dacoity with murder- Section 396
Further, death sentence is also awarded under special laws like Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.
The Law Commission in its 42nd Report suggested that:
(1) Children below the age of 18 years should notbe sentenced to death.
(2) It is not necessary to exempt women from death penalty.
(3) It is unnecessary to insert a statutory provision relating to diminished responsibility in the statute book.
(4) An attempt to commit suicide should cease to be an offence.
The courts while awarding the death sentence take into consideration the gravity of the offence committed and also various other factors affecting the crime and the criminal. However, it has been a common feeling that if the murder has been delibrate, premeditated, cold blooded and gruesome and there are no extenuating circumstances, the offender must be sentenced to death as a measure of social defence.