Death Penalty (India)

Debate between John McDonnell and Heather Wheeler

Thursday 28th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I hope that across the House we are all friends on this matter.

The Kesri Lehar campaign organised a mass lobby of Parliament last autumn, and it has worked with human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Liberty, to press the Indian Government for the abolition of the death penalty. On behalf, I hope, of the whole House, I want to thank all the Kesri Lehar campaigners, many of whom have joined us in the Gallery today.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I will visit the Sikh temples in Derby on Sunday to pick up a petition to bring to this Chamber next week or the week after, or whenever Mr Deputy Speaker will allow me to. It is interesting how this issue has captured the imagination in our local areas and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate.

[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.