Why does a judge think 23 death sentences make him brave?

A fast-track court in Muzaffarnagar sentenced a man named Nadeem to death on September 7, 2026. He was convicted of setting his wife Shehzadi on fire at Shahpur in July 2018 over dowry demands. She died at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi after recording a statement naming him. Additional District and Sessions Judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar convicted him under Sections 302 and 504 of the Indian Penal Code. He also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh.

He said he would prefer to impose the death sentence rather than being called a “coward judge”. The sentence took the court’s tally to 23 persons condemned to death sentence in 11 cases in four months.

Judge Diwakar has equated the imposition of death with judicial courage and, by implication, cast restraint as timidity. Indian sentencing law rests on the opposite premise.

What the law asks of a sentencing judge

In Bachan Singh v State of Punjab (1980), a Constitution Bench upheld the death penalty on a narrow condition. Capital punishment survives for the “rarest of rare” case, and only where the alternative of life imprisonment stands unquestionably foreclosed. Section 354(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code obliges the judge to record “special reasons” for choosing death sentence rather than life imprisonment. That requirement now sits in Section 393(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita.

The gap in the middle

A sessions judge trying a murder case chooses between life imprisonment and death. Life imprisonment in law runs for the whole of the convict’s natural life; the Supreme Court settled that in the Gopal Vinayak Godse (1961) case. The state government holds the power of remission under Sections 432 and 433 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Those are Sections 473 and 474 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. Section 433A of CrPC, now Section 475 of BNSS, bars release before 14 actual years for a life convict whose offence carried death as a possible punishment. Fourteen years has become the working assumption about what a life sentence delivers.

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The courts built a third option to close that distance. Justice Aftab Alam, then a judge of the Supreme Court, recognised a “special category of sentence” in Swamy Shraddhananda (2) v State of Karantaka (2008). A convict could be ordered to serve a fixed term well beyond 14 years, or the whole of natural life, with remission judicially barred. Justice Alam was blunt about the danger of a binary choice. A court so confined, he wrote, “may feel tempted and find itself nudged into endorsing the death penalty”.

In Union of India v V. Sriharan (December 2, 2015), a five-judge Bench approved that category and then fenced it off. Paragraph 105 of the majority opinion reserves the power to impose such a modified sentence to the High Courts and the Supreme Court. Sessions courts were left outside that grant, and cannot pass such a sentence themselves. The Court widened the category in Shiva Kumar v State of Karnataka (2023). Constitutional courts may now impose fixed-term sentences even where death is not proposed.

Where the alibi runs out

Sriharan withholds one option from the sessions judge, and leaves life imprisonment fully available along with the Bachan Singh test. A sessions judge who finds ordinary life inadequate can still impose life. He can record in his judgment that the Shraddananda option lies beyond his powers. The High Court can then weigh a fixed term without remission on confirmation. The judge who sentenced nine policemen at Madurai in the Sathankulam custodial deaths case in April 2026 acknowledged that constraint on the record.

Judge Diwakar has gone the other way, and has converted a jurisdictional limit into a personal test of nerve.

What the appellate record shows

The Square Circle Clinic at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, published its annual death penalty statistics on February 4, 2026. It has compiled the series since 2016, formerly as Project 39A at NLU Delhi.

Trial courts across India sentenced 1,279 persons to death in 822 cases over the decade to 2025. In 2025 alone they condemned 128 persons in 94 cases, and Uttar Pradesh led the states with 28. In at least 79 of those cases, the sentencing hearing failed to meet the constitutional requirements.

Those requirements come from Manoj v State of Madhya Pradesh (2022). Before a court may impose death, the state must file a probation officer’s report, a jail conduct report, and a psychiatric evaluation. The defence must get a real opportunity to lead evidence on background, illness and trauma. The Supreme Court decided Vasanta Sampat Dupare v Union of India on August 25, 2025. It held that this protocol forms part of the right to a fair trial. A sentence imposed in breach of it can be reopened under Article 32.

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High Courts set aside the death sentence in 90 per cent of the confirmation references they decided in 2025. Over the decade they confirmed 106 of 1,085 death sentences, and acquitted 376 persons outright. The Supreme Court has confirmed no death sentence since 2023, and acquitted ten death row prisoners in 2025. Wrongful incarceration on death row has averaged 9.42 years across the decade. India has carried out no execution since March 20, 2020.

The case in hand

One feature of the Shehzadi record deserves the High Court’s attention. All eleven prosecution witnesses turned hostile at trial, and the conviction rests on the dying declaration alone. A dying declaration can sustain a conviction. A record thinned to a single document calls for the fullest sentencing inquiry available.

Answering the defence

Judge Diwakar’s supporters will say his courage refers to intimidation rather than to sentencing. His own judgment presents the two as a single claim about his conduct. He records threats from mafias and criminals, and alleges that about 100 serious cases were withdrawn from his court to benefit them.

A judge who faces threats is owed protection, and those who threaten him deserve prosecution.

The Muzaffarnagar District Bar Association gave a different account of the August transfer. Its president, Pramod Tyagi, said lawyers and litigants feared that the fast-track court would award capital punishment in the serious cases before it. Around 97 files moved to the court of Judge Virendra Kumar Singh.

A second defence will invoke the safeguard. Section 366 of the Criminal Procedure Code requires every death sentence passed by a sessions court to be confirmed by the High Court. Section 407 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita carries that requirement forward. The safeguard works, and the years it takes to work are years the prisoner spends in a condemned cell.

The reformative premise

Indian criminal law rests on the possibility of reform. In Mohd. Firoz v State of Madhya Pradesh (2022), a three-judge Bench commuted a death sentence for the rape and murder of a four-year-old. Justice Bela M. Trivedi, who wrote the judgment, invoked the principle that “every sinner has a future”. In Mofil Khan v State of Jharkhand (2021), the Court placed the burden on the State to establish that reformation is ruled out. A judge who declines to impose death has discharged a constitutional function.

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The vacuum itself stays open, and only the Supreme Court can close it. On September 19, 2022, the Supreme Court referred the question of a uniform framework for mitigating circumstances to a Constitution Bench. Four years on, In Re: Framing Guidelines Regarding Potential Mitigating Circumstances awaits hearing. A Bench that takes it up could also ask whether sessions judges should hold the Shraddananda power themselves.

Until that happens, courage in a sessions court means following Bachan Singh to its conclusion. It means gathering the mitigating material as mandated in Manoj, and setting down honestly what a life sentence would achieve. That work runs slower than a death sentence, and it is the work the Constitution assigns the trial court.