INDIA. 'INDIA CARRIED OUT 1,422 EXECUTIONS IN A DECADE', RIGHTS GROUP

March 13, 2005: the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), a leading Indian civil rights group, said that 1,422 executions were carried out in a single decade (1953-63) across the country.
The claim by the PUDR contradicted Home Ministry figures, which showed that only 55 people had been executed till date in the country.
According to official figures, the last hanging was that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee in Kolkata in August 2004 for raping and murdering a minor.
The PUDR said its information had been obtained from government records. It said the appendix of the 35th Report of the Law Commission (1965) detailed the number of people executed in 16 states in 1953-63. The total came to 1,422.
The Madras state/Tamil Nadu topped the list with 485 executions, followed by Uttar Pradesh (397), Punjab (140) and Andhra Pradesh (119). But the Law Commission report did not state why so many people were executed.
"Now that we know of the 1,422 executions, we fear the total number (of executions) since independence would be much higher," Deepika Tandon, the PUDR secretary, said.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which chronicles crime statistics, could not explain the huge differences between the PUDR and official figures of executions. So far, NCRB had provided information of executions post-1995.
NCRB director Ram Avtar Yadav said: "I have no idea how the figure is out there in the Law Commission report. So far we have been just collecting details provided by the various state governments."
The PUDR stressed that given the depth of statistical details on crime recorded by the government, it was difficult to reason the silence on the large number of death penalties and executions. (Sources: New Kerala, 13/03/2005)