What Supreme Court acquittals reveal about the death penalty in India

The Square Circle Clinic’s “Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report 2025”, published by NALSAR University of Law earlier this month, offers a sobering portrait of India’s criminal justice system. Square Circle Clinic was formerly known as Project 39A and was based at the National Law University, Delhi.

The key—and concerning—takeaway from the 123-page report is that acquittal rates far outpace confirmations in cases where capital punishment has been handed out. Over the last ten years, High Courts have acquitted 326 persons from death row in 191 cases (34.65%), a rate nearly four times the confirmation rate. 

In the same period, the number of acquittals by the Supreme Court was 38. In 2025 alone, the Supreme Court acquitted accused persons in over 50 percent of the cases it decided—10 out of 19. These are not merely cases of sentencing errors but instances where individuals were found to have been wrongfully convicted of the most serious crimes, often spending years on death row for offences they did not commit. For the third consecutive year, the Supreme Court did not confirm a single death sentence in 2025. 

The report catalogs case after case where appellate courts found investigations marred by witness tampering, fabricated evidence, coerced confessions and DNA mismatches. In multiple instances, courts noted that accused persons spent years on death row before forensic evidence definitively established their innocence. The Supreme Court has repeatedly highlighted “serious lapses” and “procedural disregard” by investigation agencies and prosecution. As the report notes, these lapses “don’t paint a picture where the rule of law is taken seriously.”

Lack of safeguards at trial level

Despite clear mandates from the Supreme Court, trial courts continue to impose death sentences with a startling disregard for due process. In the landmark 2022 ruling of Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the top court established practical guidelines requiring courts to consider comprehensive reports on an accused person’s mental health, jail conduct and personal history before awarding a death sentence. The goal was to ensure that the death penalty is reserved only for those beyond reform.

However, the data from 2025 shows that Sessions Courts followed these guidelines in less than five percent of cases. Instead, many courts continue the practice of same-day sentencing, where a person is sentenced to death almost immediately after being found guilty. This compressed timeline leaves no room for the collection of mitigating evidence, effectively stripping the accused of their right to a meaningful sentencing hearing.

The report finds that of the 265 death sentences imposed by Sessions Courts after the Manoj guidelines became mandatory, at least 208 cases—a staggering 78.49 percent—violated the requirements. 

Death row numbers continue to rise

Despite the high rates of acquittals and commutations, the number of people living under the shadow of the gallows is rising. As of the end of 2025, there were 574 persons on death row in India, the highest since 2016. Uttar Pradesh holds the largest portion of this population, followed by Gujarat and Haryana.

This growing backlog is partly due to the frequency with which Sessions Courts impose death sentences—128 persons were sentenced in 2025 alone. This continues to outpace the rate at which cases are cleared by the higher courts. The average person acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2025 had spent over nine years on death row, illustrating the human cost of protracted legal battles.

The shift toward constitutional accountability

A significant jurisprudential shift occurred in 2025 with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Vasanta Sampat Dupare v. Union of India. The Court elevated the requirement for Manoj-compliant sentencing hearings to the status of a fundamental right under the Constitution. 

Following this verdict, several persons who had already exhausted their appeals have had their sentencing hearings reopened to ensure compliance with these fair trial rights. Furthermore, individuals acquitted after years of wrongful incarceration are beginning to seek monetary compensation from the State, arguing that their fundamental rights to life and liberty were violated.

When constitutional protections designed specifically for capital punishment cases are flouted in nearly four-fifths of instances, it suggests the problem pervades the entire criminal justice system. Cases not attracting death sentences—including those resulting in Life Imprisonment Without Release (LWOR)—likely suffer even greater procedural failures, as they escape the appellate scrutiny reserved for capital cases.

Lacunae in LWOR sentencing

The LWOR category includes both fixed-term sentences excluding remission and life imprisonment excluding remission for natural life. The numbers are striking: 58.83 percent of High Court commutations (303 of 515) and 61.97 percent of Supreme Court commutations (44 of 71) resulted in LWOR sentences.

The report identifies this as “a worryingly unregulated area of law.” Courts employ LWOR sentences without clear guidance on determining appropriate exclusion periods, whether 20 years or 60 years or natural life. The penological justifications remain unarticulated. As the report observes, beyond “broad references to the crime,” courts rarely explain the relationship between exclusion terms and principles of proportionality, culpability or reformation.

This lacuna is particularly concerning because LWOR sentences, while not immediately fatal, condemn individuals to die in prison. They eliminate hope—what the report poignantly describes as “an important essence of life.” Moreover, these sentences escape the procedural safeguards developed for capital cases. Where Dupare mandates sentencing hearings as fundamental rights in death cases, LWOR sentences are imposed without comparable protection.

Patterns over a decade 

The 2025 edition also analyses decade-long trends; the report was first published in 2016 by then Project 39A. Death sentences imposed by Sessions Courts have remained relatively steady, ranging from 76-166 annually. However, confirmation rates have remained substantially lower than acquittal rates over the decade. Out of 842 cases, High Courts confirmed 70 (8.31 percent), acquitted 285 (33.84 percent) and commuted 411. The remaining pertained to those that abated following the death of the accused or sent back for retrial. Of a total of 153 cases, the Supreme Court confirmed 19 death sentences (12.41 percent)—eight at criminal appeal stage and 11 at review petition stage—and commuted 71 (46.40 percent).

Geographically, death sentences concentrate in specific states—Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra consistently lead. Offence-wise, murder simpliciter (unaccompanied by other aggravating crimes) constitutes a significant portion of death sentences, followed by murder with sexual offences and murder with kidnapping.

The report also tracks mercy petition outcomes and executive clemency patterns, noting the prolonged delays inmates face between final judicial rejection and executive consideration—delays the Supreme Court has repeatedly condemned as constituting “mental torture.” 

Over the past decade, the President has accepted the mercy petitions of five convicts, each of whom had spent more than 15 years on death row. One had spent 18.6 years, while the remaining four had spent about 15.6 years each. In the same period, the President rejected 19 mercy petitions. Four of those convicts were subsequently executed. The remaining 15 are “no longer on death row”, as they secured some relief from the High Courts or the Supreme Court at the post-mercy writ petition stage.

Rigour amid data constraints

The report deserves commendation for methodological transparency. The foreword notes that “robust data scraping and cross checking can only assure data accuracy where data is available.” In a country as diverse and decentralised as India, comprehensive death penalty statistics remain elusive. Court records, particularly at Sessions Court level, are often unavailable or belatedly released.

Despite these constraints, the Square Circle Clinic has assembled the most comprehensive death penalty dataset available for India. The report includes corrections to previous years’ data as new information emerges, demonstrating commitment to accuracy. It draws on official court websites, manual data collection, and case-by-case analysis of judgments—an intensive process that has now yielded a decade of comparative data.

The crisis behind the numbers

For legal practitioners, scholars, and policymakers, this report should serve as a wake-up call. The death penalty may be declining as a judicial practice, but the issues it exposes—constitutional violations, investigative failures, unregulated severe punishments—demand urgent attention. 

The Square Circle Clinic team has, over ten years and previously as Project 39A, built an invaluable empirical foundation for understanding capital punishment in India. What this foundation reveals should trouble anyone committed to constitutional governance and the rule of law.