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| Former Deputy Registrar Anup Surendranath slams Supreme Court for Yakub Memon verdict |
Staff correspondent, August 2, 2015, NewsCrunch
Anup Surendranath, deputy registrar of research at Supreme Court, quit in protest after Yakub Memon was hanged to death.
In his Facebook post he has called the verdict "judicial abdication, which should count among the amongst the darkest hours for the Supreme Court of India."
He refused to elaborate to the media where the Supreme Court had erred. .
But Anup Surendranath resignation seems to have come less from the specifics of the Yakub Memon case and more from his general opposition to death penalty.
The research project seeks to interview about the 400+ death row prisoners in India and Anup Surendranath himself has spoken to over 100.
In this video, which was recorded 2014, he explains what he found during the course of his ongoing research and why for death row prisoners dying is the easy part.
Anup Surendranath says when it comes to debating death penalty, the focus has to shift from the top courts to the trial courts, where the death sentences are actually passed.
A person, who is sentenced to death, is never calm; he never thinks that the appeal process in the High Court and the Supreme court will take years. Death is always on his mind. He becomes sensitive to the sound. Any disturbance at night, jail gates closing, he thinks they are coming for him.
98% of those sentenced to death are first time offenders - not hardened criminals. They commit crime in a state of mental distress not through cold calculations. Hence, the argument that death penalty deters others is futile.
The impact on the families is terrible they are ostracized by their communities and made to go through a living hell everyday of their life.
The evidence which hangs people to death is weak. There is no analysis of the quality of the trial court decisions or the quality of legal aid received by the accused. The government appointed lawyers do not even speak to these prisoners.
The concerned High Courts usually commute 85% of the death penalty cases.
Finally, it is the poor and the illiterates who get victimised. Dalits and Muslims dominate the ranks of those sentenced to death by anti-terror laws.