Death Penalty (India)

Debate between John McDonnell and Jim Cunningham

Thursday 28th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I am grateful for the work the hon. Lady is undertaking. When we visit the gurdwaras, it is interesting to see not only the range of men and women who support the campaign but the number of young people who have joined and led it recently.

I raised the death penalty and human rights abuses in India in this House last year, but I do so today with an even greater sense of urgency. Why? India has started to execute people again. When India secured its independence from Britain, it retained its 19th century penal code, which included the death penalty for murder. Until the 1980s, capital punishment was implemented regularly. From then on, although death sentences were pronounced by Indian courts they were increasingly not put into practice. In 1980, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty should be used in the rarest of rare cases, which led eventually to an eight-year moratorium on the death penalty being implemented within India.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) and I have a large Punjabi community in Coventry, which is very concerned about the death penalty. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) agree that the British Government should be encouraging the Indian Government to honour and sign international treaties against the death penalty and, more importantly, to reform the police force? We have seen in the media instances of the police force not investigating serious crimes against women or not taking them seriously. Last night, I presented a petition on behalf of the Punjabi community not only in Coventry but nationally.

[John McDonnell]

I am grateful for the work that my hon. Friend has undertaken in this campaign over the years—his involvement is not merely recent. It is interesting that although the debate is focused on the death penalty, it has emerged that there have been extra-judicial killings, too.