India Supreme Court backs hanging as method of execution

India’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a plea seeking to replace hanging with what petitioners argued were less painful methods of execution, leaving hanging as the prescribed method for carrying out the death penalty in the country.

However, the court made clear that its ruling need not be the final word on the issue, saying the Central government remained free to examine alternatives and that the question could be reconsidered if new scientific or medical evidence emerged.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta dismissed the petition challenging execution by hanging on the grounds that it causes unnecessary pain and fails to protect the dignity of death row prisoners, ANI and NDTV reported.

The petition had proposed methods including lethal injection, shooting, electrocution and the gas chamber as possible alternatives.

The court also rejected a request to refer three earlier Supreme Court judgments dealing with the issue to a larger bench, saying there was insufficient reason to do so, according to NDTV.

Significantly, the bench said dismissal of the petition should not prevent the issue from being examined again if advances in science and medicine provide compelling evidence that undermines the basis of earlier rulings.

“Before parting, we clarify that the dismissal of the present writ petition must not be understood as foreclosing future constitutional scrutiny should compelling scientific, medical, or empirical evidence emerge demonstrating that the factual and scientific basis on which the decision in Dina proceeded has been materially displaced by subsequent developments,” NDTV quoted the court as saying.

The court also said the Centre could, if it chose, constitute an expert committee to comprehensively review alternative methods of carrying out death sentences.

According to ANI, the ruling therefore leaves the current system intact while allowing the government to undertake a wider scientific, medical and legal assessment of whether another method could reduce suffering.

The public interest litigation was filed by lawyer Rishi Malhotra, who argued that hanging was painful, cruel and inhuman and that death row prisoners should have a right to a more dignified death.

According to NDTV, the petition challenged Section 354(5) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which prescribed hanging as the method of execution, and sought recognition of the right to a dignified death under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The petitioner argued that a person could take around 40 minutes to be declared dead following hanging, compared with about five minutes through methods such as shooting or lethal injection.

Malhotra also cited a United Nations resolution stating that where capital punishment is imposed, it should be carried out in a manner that causes the least possible suffering, NDTV reported.

The case concerned the method of carrying out a death sentence rather than the broader constitutional validity of capital punishment itself, ANI reported.

The question of alternative execution methods had been discussed during earlier hearings in the case.

Attorney General R. Venkataramani, appearing for the Centre, had told the court that the government had constituted a committee to examine the issue, according to NDTV.

At an October 2025 hearing, the possibility of allowing death row prisoners to choose between hanging and lethal injection was also raised. The Centre, however, said in an affidavit that providing such a choice was “not practically feasible”.

The bench had expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s position during those proceedings.

“The problem is that the government is not willing to change,” the court orally remarked at the time, according to NDTV, while observing that hanging was an old procedure and that circumstances had evolved.

Senior counsel Sonia Mathur, representing the Centre, had argued that the method of execution involved a policy decision.

The Supreme Court concluded hearings in the case and reserved its judgment on January 22, 2026.

Tuesday’s decision means there is no immediate change in how death sentences are carried out in India.

Capital punishment remains available for the “rarest of rare” cases, and hanging continues to be the prescribed method of execution.

But by expressly allowing for future scrutiny based on stronger scientific, medical or empirical evidence — and leaving the Centre free to commission an expert review — the Supreme Court has kept open the possibility that the method could be reconsidered in the future.