CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN INDIAN LEGAL HISTORY

Abstract

The idea of capital punishment still finds its prevalent place in our legal systems all around the world. Its validity has been under question since a long time, the article below aims at providing a historical perspective to the concept and how it emerged in the Indian context. The cross-current of prevalent religious ideas and the following rule of England until India’s independence in 1947 have woven the current fabric of the Indian legal system. Therefore, a reference to how these aspects played a part in shaping capital punishment in the Indian legal system forms one of the major parts of the article. The discussion closely focuses on the evolution of capital punishment by tracing its presence in different forms throughout the history of the Indian legal setting. The debate around the validity of capital punishment has witnessed contribution from several standpoints, but there is a need to take the historical point of view into consideration to recognize and explore the punishment’s nature and then assess its validity. The article concludes the discussion on the modern setting which ends the reader’s journey through the historical evolution of capital punishment in the Indian context while also analysing how these events shaped the modern conception of capital punishment. The analysis is done largely through the texts that document these events and through texts which are the major sources of law in the particular temporal context.