A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta rejected a Writ Petition challenging the provisions of Section 354(5) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973(CrPC) (Now Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS)), which states that death sentence can be carried out through hanging by the neck only.
The Court did not find it to be so, in view of the fact that the petitioner had not placed on record any material that would cast any doubt upon the correctness of the judgment of the three judge Bench in the case of Deena v. Union of India (1983) in which hanging was held to be consistent with Article 21 and the subsequent judgment of the Constitution Bench in Shashi Nayar v. Union of India (1992). The Court held that this considerably narrowed the scope for a two-judge Bench to take a different view.
In 2017, the petitioner, Rishi Malhotra, who appeared before the Court, had claimed that an execution by hanging is barbaric, inhuman and cruel and infringes Article 21, which guarantees the right to life with dignity. He relied on the Law Commission of India 187th Report of 2003, and cited the military statutes allowing execution by shooting as an alternative to hanging as evidence of Article 14 discrimination against civilians in normal criminal law.
Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora appeared before the Court on behalf of Project 39A, National Law University, Delhi, and presented to it scientific and comparative evidence pertaining to lethal injection, including documented cases of botched executions in the United States, and argued that any other method of execution would have to be subjected to a robust and constitutional examination before it could be adopted.
For the Union of India, Attorney General R. Venkataramani argued against the plea, stating that Parliament was aware of the issue and had deliberately elected to retain the hanging as an execution method in 2023 with the introduction of BNSS.
The Court said that its dismissal does not preclude further constitutional challenge in the event of the emergence of compelling scientific, medical or empirical evidence in the future and said that it did not preclude the Union Government from conducting a review of the existing method of execution by an expert body, as a matter of policy. The judgment mentions that the Attorney General had indicated to the Court in 2023 that the committee's constitution was being considered, but there is no further indication of any developments in this regard.
The judgment brings the matter to a close for now, with no further hearing scheduled. Any pending applications connected to the petition stand disposed of.
Source:
Case Name: Rishi Malhotra & Anr. v. Union of India
Citation: 2026 INSC 873
Coram/Bench: Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta.
Date: 18th August 2026