Long death list as courts get tough

New Delhi: The death sentence awarded to three AIADMK workers for burning three students to death in Tamil Nadu in 2000 may again spark a debate over the ethics of capital punishment.

A Salem court on Friday awarded Neduthezhian, Madhu and Muniappan capital punishment for torching a bus carrying college students. The judgment takes the total number of death sentences awarded all over the country in the last three days to seven.

The Supreme Court on Thursday awarded four death sentences in 48 hours—a very rare occasion. It upheld the death sentence awarded to two young men Karnataka for raping and murdering an 18-year-old girl of their village.

A bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and Lokeshwar Singh Panta described the two men as ‘‘sexually obsessed youngsters’’ who attempted to rape many.

The Supreme Court upheld the Karnataka High Court’s judgment and said it followed the rarest of rare principle courts follow in awarding death sentence.

The two men had attempted to rape two other girls of their village. Village elders let them off after a warning and they later raped and murdered a girl in October 2001.

Death for killer couple

In a separate case, the Supreme Court on Thursday sentenced to death a couple who brutally murdered eight members of their family in August 2001 for property.

Sonia and her husband Sanjeev Kumar were found guilty of murdering her father Relu Ram Punia, a former MLA from Hissar in Haryana, mother Krishna, stepbrother and his wife, their three small children aged four, two, and two-months-old, and Sonia's younger sister.

The apex court upheld the earlier order of the Hissar district court that the couple was guilty of a barbarous crime and deserved death penalty.

Sonia and her husband feared that they would be dispossessed of the family's huge property in Haryana. AN IANS report says the Punjab and Haryana High Court had in April 2005 commuted the death sentence to the couple to life imprisonment. The Supreme Court reversed the high court order.

On death row

Mohammad Afzal Guru is the country’s most famous row convict, and appeals to the President to grant him clemency have sparked a nation-wide debate. Afzal was awarded the death penalty last year for his role in the 2001 attack on Parliament. He is to be hanged in Delhi’s Tihar jail.

Lawyer Santosh Kumar Singh, who has been found guilty of raping and murdering law student Priyadarshini Mattoo, is also in Tihar on death row. The Delhi High Court awarded him death sentence last year.