UNITED NATIONS: India has opposed a UN resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, saying it goes against Indian law and the sovereign right of countries to determine their own laws and penalties. Mayank Joshi, a counsellor at India's UN Mission said, "The resolution before us sought to promote a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty. My delegation, therefore, has voted against the resolution as a whole as it goes against Indian statutory law."
Explaining New Delhi's stand on capital punishment, Joshi said, "In India, the death penalty is exercised in the rarest of rare cases, where the crime committed is so heinous as to shock the conscience of society." In the last two years only three executions, all of them terrorists, have been carried out in the nation of 1.2 billion. An independent judiciary hears the cases where death penalty can be imposed and appeals are permitted at several levels, Joshi added. He also said that the Supreme Court has decreed that "poverty, socio-economic, psychic compulsions, undeserved adversities in life" should be considered as mitigating factors in imposing the death penalty.
The amendment about the sovereign right of nations to have their own legal systems was introduced by Singapore with its delegate saying the original resolution was one-sided and tried to impose the values of one group of countries upon others. The resolution was adopted by the General Assembly's committee dealing with humanitarian affairs by 115 votes to 38 with 31 abstentions after an acrimonious debate and the adoption of an amendment to recognise the sovereign rights of nations to determine their own laws. The amendment passed by a vote of 76 to 72 with 26 abstentions.
