Death penalty mostly awarded to dalits and religious minorities

Dear friends,

 

Here are a couple of very sobering excerpts from the following article:

 

Honourable President Prof. Abdul Kalam: 'Why does the capital punishment confine only to the weaker sections of the Indian society?'

 

Former attorney Ramsey Clark: 'It is the poor, the sick, the ignorant, the powerless, and the hated that are executed.

 

Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer: 'Any economic-penological survey will reveal that, by and large, death penalty laws' wrathful majesty, in blood-shot equality, over periods of history, deals the fatal blow on the poor, not the rich, the pariah, not the brahmin, the black, not the white, the under-dog, not the top-dog, the women, not the men, the dissenter, not the conformist. Capital sentence perhaps has a class bias and colour bar, even as criminal law barks at both but bites the proletariat to defend the proprietary.'

 

Death penalty mostly awarded to dalits and religious minorities
 By Ish Gangania,
 Sub-editor, Apeksha – quarterly Hindi magazine, Delhi, and a Social Activist)

http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Death-penalty/2006/biased.htm