New Developments in India

On 29-30 November, we co-ordinated, together with the Centre on the Death Penalty at the National Law University Delhi, a roundtable meeting on the death penalty in Delhi.

The meeting was held in response to the recent publication of the new Law Commission of India report on the death penalty (in August 2015) recommending the abolition of the death penalty in India for all crimes excluding terrorism offences.

The broad objective of the meeting was to explore future directions for research in light of the debate and discussions on the death penalty generated by the Law Commission report. The report and other recent events in India have revealed a range of divergent views on the death penalty among parliamentarians, actors in the criminal justice system, including former and sitting members of the judiciary, and the general public.

Participants, including representatives from different stakeholder groups, were invited to discuss the current legal, political and social contexts affecting the death penalty debate in India. Discussions were led by Director of the Centre on the Death Penalty, Anup Surendranath, and DPP Co-Executive Director Saul Lehrfreund. They were joined by distinguished local and international experts in the field including leading criminologists from the UK, Professor Carolyn Hoyle, Director of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford, and Dr Mai Sato of Reading University.