Law & Justice · September 2026
23 Death Sentences in 5 Months.
A single sessions judge in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh sentenced 23 people to death in approximately five months. The Supreme Court has very clear rules about how death sentences must be imposed. Less than 4% of trial court death sentences since 2022 follow those rules. This is not a small procedural problem. It is a constitutional crisis hiding in courtrooms.
A death sentence is the most irreversible act a court can perform. It ends a life. Once carried out, no appellate judgment can undo it. For this reason, the Supreme Court of India has built, over decades, a careful architecture of procedural safeguards — specific requirements that a court must satisfy before it condemns a person to death. These are not suggestions. They are binding law.
Between approximately February and July 2026, the Additional District and Sessions Judge (ADJ) in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh handed down death sentences to 23 people across nine separate judgments. The sentences were imposed in roughly five months.
Researchers at NALSAR University of Law examined those nine judgments carefully. What they found should concern every person who believes that the law means what it says — regardless of their views on capital punishment.
What the Supreme Court Requires Before a Death Sentence
To understand what went wrong in Muzaffarnagar, you first need to understand what the law requires. Indian law on the death penalty has evolved through a series of landmark Supreme Court judgments that have progressively made the process more rigorous and individualised.
What Is the “Rarest of Rare” Doctrine?
The Legal Standard That Governs Every Death Sentence in India
In 1980, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court decided the case of Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab. This is the foundational death penalty judgment in Indian law. The court held that the death penalty should be imposed only in the “rarest of rare” cases — meaning it should be exceptional, not routine.
More importantly, the court laid down a two-part test that must be applied every time a court considers imposing death:
1. The nature of the crime — How brutal, heinous, or shocking was the offence? This is the aggravating side of the balance.
2. The circumstances of the accused — Who is this person? What is their background, mental state, social history, possibility of reform? This is the mitigating side.
The court was explicit: a judge cannot impose death just because a crime was horrific. They must also examine the person who committed it and determine whether life imprisonment would be “unquestionably foreclosed” — meaning there is no possibility of reform or redemption. This individualised assessment is not optional. It is constitutionally required.
For decades after Bachan Singh, there was a gap between the law’s requirement and courtroom practice. Mitigation — the investigation of an accused person’s background, mental health, and social circumstances — was often reduced to the judge asking the accused at sentencing whether they had “anything to say.” The accused usually said nothing meaningful. The judge moved on. Bachan Singh’s requirement of individualised assessment became, in practice, a formality.
Manoj v. State of MP (2022): The Game-Changing Judgment
In May 2022, the Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh that tried to fix the gap between the Bachan Singh standard and actual practice. The court laid down a detailed, mandatory procedural framework that every trial court must follow before imposing death.
The Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh Framework — What a Court Must Do Before Imposing Death
The Supreme Court held in Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh that “meaningful consideration of mitigating circumstances” requires the court to have actual documentary material before it. This means the following reports must be sought and examined:
- Probation officer’s report — assessing the accused’s social background, family circumstances, community context
- Prison authority’s report — on the accused’s conduct and behaviour while in custody
- Psychological and psychiatric assessment — evaluating mental health, any history of trauma, cognitive functioning
- Mitigation report from the defence — a detailed report on the accused’s socio-economic history, childhood, education, employment, relationships, and personal background
The purpose of these reports is to allow the court to genuinely assess: who is this person, what formed them, can they reform, and does the death penalty serve any purpose that life imprisonment would not? Asking the accused “do you have anything to say?” in court does not fulfil this requirement.
What Is Mitigation?
Why a Person’s Background Matters in Sentencing
“Mitigation” in criminal law refers to facts about a person or their circumstances that do not excuse or justify the crime but reduce the severity of the punishment that is appropriate. Mitigating factors might include: a history of abuse or trauma, extreme poverty, a mental illness, youth, lack of prior criminal history, remorse, or evidence of strong possibility of reform.
Mitigation is not about feeling sorry for a murderer. It is about answering the constitutional question: is this person so irredeemably dangerous and so incapable of reform that society is justified in ending their life?
That question cannot be answered by looking only at what the person did. It requires looking at who they are — and that requires investigation, documentation, and evidence. The Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh judgment mandated that this investigation must actually happen before any death sentence is pronounced.
Then, in August 2025, the Supreme Court reinforced the Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh framework in Vasanta Sampat Dupare v. Union of India. The court held explicitly that imposing a death sentence without following the safeguards mandated in Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh would be a violation of the accused’s fundamental rights — not merely a procedural irregularity, but a constitutional violation.
What the Muzaffarnagar Judgments Actually Show
Against this legal background, researchers examined the nine Muzaffarnagar death sentence judgments. Their findings are striking — not because the trial judge ignored Supreme Court precedents, but because he cited them extensively while ignoring what they actually require.
The judgments repeatedly cite the same set of Supreme Court cases — including Bachan Singh — in much the same sequence, often using the same excerpts. The citations are there. The reasoning is not.
When the judgments come to the actual decision — should this person be sentenced to death or to life imprisonment — the reasoning rests almost entirely on the nature and circumstances of the crime. The crimes are described in detail. Their brutality is documented. The offences are characterised as heinous. Death is imposed.
What is absent from the judgments is any indication that the Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh framework was followed. There is no evidence that probation reports, prison authority reports, psychological assessments, or mitigation reports were obtained or considered. There is no individualised examination of who the accused persons are — their backgrounds, mental states, histories, or possibilities of reform. The law as laid down by Bachan Singh and reinforced by Manoj was, in the key moment, simply not applied.
The National Picture: Only 4% Compliance
The Muzaffarnagar cases are troubling. The national data is alarming.
The National Compliance Picture — NALSAR Data
- Research period: 2023 to 2025 (after the May 2022 Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh judgment)
- Total trial court death sentences analysed: 216 cases
- Cases that complied with Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh requirements: 8 cases
- Compliance rate: less than 4%
- Cases not following mandatory Supreme Court procedure: more than 96%
Source: The Square Circle Clinic, NALSAR University of Law
Read that again. After the Supreme Court issued a detailed, specific, mandatory framework for how death sentences must be imposed — a framework it later elevated to the status of a fundamental right requirement — over 96 percent of trial courts that imposed death sentences in the following three years simply did not follow it.
This is not a few judges making isolated errors. This is a near-total systemic failure to implement a binding Supreme Court precedent in the highest-stakes legal context that exists. It raises profound questions about how India’s trial courts understand their relationship to Supreme Court authority.
What Happens to These 23 People Now?
Under Indian law, every death sentence imposed by a trial court must be confirmed by the relevant High Court before it can be carried out. This is called the “confirmation” process. The High Court reviews the case afresh — it examines both the conviction and the sentence independently, and it has the power to uphold, modify, or set aside the death sentence.
What Is Appellate Review of Death Sentences?
Why a Trial Court Death Sentence Is Not the Final Word
In India, a person sentenced to death does not go to the gallows on the basis of the trial court’s verdict alone. The law requires multiple layers of judicial review:
- High Court confirmation: Every death sentence is automatically referred to the High Court for confirmation. The High Court reviews the trial court’s judgment and must independently satisfy itself that the death sentence is warranted.
- Appeal to the Supreme Court: The accused (and the state) can further appeal to the Supreme Court.
- Mercy petition: Even after the Supreme Court, a condemned person can file a mercy petition with the Governor of the State and then the President of India.
This multi-layered process reflects the principle that the irreversibility of death demands an exceptional degree of care at every stage.
Virtually none of the 23 Muzaffarnagar death sentences will ultimately be upheld, precisely because they do not comply with the Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh framework. The Allahabad High Court will review them, find the Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh requirements unmet, and will be obliged to reject the sentences as constitutionally invalid.
But this will take years. The 23 people condemned in those Muzaffarnagar courtrooms will spend those years under the shadow of a death sentence that was almost certainly going to be overturned from the moment it was imposed. They will wait. Their families will wait. The legal process will grind on.
The Bigger Problem: What These Cases Reveal About the System
The Muzaffarnagar judgments, and the NALSAR data behind them, point to three distinct but interconnected failures.
First: A failure of legal training. If more than 96 percent of death sentence judgments are non-compliant with a four-year-old Supreme Court precedent, something has failed in how that precedent is being communicated to and absorbed by trial courts. The Manoj judgment is not obscure or difficult — it is one of the most discussed Supreme Court rulings of recent years. Trial judges who impose death sentences should know it and apply it. That most apparently do not suggests a systemic gap in judicial training and oversight.
Second: A conflation of crime and criminal. The temptation in severe cases is obvious. A crime has been committed that shocks the conscience. A judge who lets the horror of the crime dominate the sentencing reasoning is, in human terms, understandable. But it is legally wrong. The Bachan Singh standard exists precisely because the severity of a crime is not, by itself, sufficient justification for killing the person who committed it. A judge who sentences on the basis of crime severity alone — however egregious the crime — is not applying the law. They are substituting their moral reaction for it.
Third: A confusion about what judicial independence means. Judicial independence cannot and does not mean judicial freedom from the law. A trial court judge has independence from external political or personal pressure. They do not have independence from binding Supreme Court precedent. The law laid down in Bachan Singh, Manoj, and Dupare is not optional. It is not something a trial judge can decide to weigh against their own philosophy of punishment. It is binding.
It means not the courage to impose a death sentence when a crime is horrible — that, in fact, requires very little courage, because the public and the judge’s own instinct may support it. The real courage is in following the law even when it demands more from you, even when it complicates the obvious response, even when it requires you to look at the person who committed the crime and not just at what they did.
Twenty-three people in Muzaffarnagar are currently under death sentences that were almost certainly imposed in violation of the Constitution. They will probably not be executed. But they will wait, for years, for the appellate process to confirm what the law already says. That is not justice. That is a legal system failing to keep its own house in order.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.
On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.