Dismissing Rishi Malhotra’s 2017 petition, the Court declined to reconsider the three-judge Bench ruling in Dina that upheld hanging, while stressing that constitutional interpretation must evolve with scientific knowledge.
BY PC Bureau
NEW DELHI/ August 18, 2026 : The Supreme Court has declined to strike down hanging as the method of carrying out a death sentence, but its ruling leaves open the possibility of a fresh constitutional challenge if advances in science establish that a different method can substantially reduce pain and better protect the dignity of condemned prisoners.
A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta on Tuesday dismissed a petition filed by Senior Advocate Rishi Malhotra challenging the constitutional validity of the statutory provision prescribing execution by hanging in India.
The petition, filed in 2017 in Rishi Malhotra v. Union of India, had sought replacement of hanging with a more humane and painless method of execution.
The Court, however, declined to refer the issue to a larger Bench for reconsideration of the Supreme Court’s earlier three-judge Bench ruling in Dina v. Union of India, which had upheld the constitutional validity of hanging.
“We are not persuaded that a case has been made out” for reconsidering the Dina decision, the Bench said while dismissing the plea.
Court does not close constitutional door
The ruling, however, stops short of declaring that hanging can never again be constitutionally examined.
The Bench specifically clarified that its dismissal should not be interpreted as permanently foreclosing judicial scrutiny if new scientific, medical or empirical evidence demonstrates that the factual foundation of the earlier Dina ruling has been overtaken by subsequent developments.
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The observation is significant because it recognises that constitutional adjudication on the manner of execution cannot necessarily remain frozen in the scientific understanding prevailing when an earlier judgment was delivered.
The Court stressed that constitutional interpretation is “organic” and must remain responsive both to evolving constitutional principles and advances in scientific knowledge.
In effect, the Court has left open a narrow but potentially important route for future litigation: new evidence, rather than simply a renewed legal challenge to the existing method.
What the Dina precedent established
The Dina case is central to the Court’s reasoning.
In Dina @ Deena v. Union of India, a three-judge Bench considered a challenge to execution by hanging and examined whether the method violated the constitutional guarantee of life and personal liberty under Article 21.
The challenge was based substantially on the argument that hanging could cause unnecessary suffering and therefore amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
The Court did not accept that proposition on the material then before it and upheld the statutory provision.
The present Bench was therefore confronted with a more specific question: whether there was sufficient justification to reopen that constitutional determination before a larger Bench.
It concluded that there was not.
But the Court’s reasoning is important because it does not treat the earlier judgment as immune from reconsideration forever.
Instead, it indicates that a future challenge could acquire constitutional significance if credible evidence demonstrates that hanging causes greater pain or suffering than an available alternative.
Government can examine alternatives
The Supreme Court also expressly left the door open for the Union government to investigate alternative methods.
The Bench said the government could establish an expert body involving specialists in law, forensic medicine, neuroscience, criminology and related disciplines to assess whether another method would better satisfy the constitutional objective of minimising unnecessary pain while preserving the dignity of condemned prisoners.
That suggestion shifts part of the debate from purely constitutional litigation towards empirical investigation.
The question is no longer simply whether hanging was constitutionally acceptable when Dina was decided.
It is whether modern medical and scientific evidence establishes that another method would produce less unnecessary suffering without compromising the execution of a sentence lawfully imposed by a court.
The global controversy over execution methods
The debate is hardly unique to India.
Countries that retain capital punishment have adopted markedly different methods, including lethal injection, electrocution, gas-based execution, firing squads and hanging. None has escaped controversy over pain, reliability, medical ethics or the possibility of a prolonged death.
Lethal injection has perhaps generated the most extensive modern litigation in the United States. Challenges have centred on drug combinations, difficulty obtaining execution drugs, botched procedures and whether the process creates an unconstitutional risk of severe pain.
United States has also seen renewed debate over firing squads and other methods as states struggle with shortages of lethal-injection drugs and difficulties in carrying out executions.
Japan continues to use hanging for executions, making it one of the prominent developed countries where the method remains legally prescribed.
In other jurisdictions, capital punishment has been abolished altogether, reflecting a broader international movement away from state executions.
The controversy has consequently moved beyond the narrow question of which method is technically most effective. It increasingly encompasses whether the State should have the power to deliberately cause death at all and, where capital punishment remains legal, what limits the Constitution places on the manner in which that death may be inflicted.
India’s constitutional dilemma
India’s position is particularly complex.
The Constitution does not prohibit capital punishment outright. The Supreme Court has instead developed the “rarest of rare” doctrine, restricting the death penalty to exceptional cases where the alternative of life imprisonment is unquestionably inadequate.
But once a death sentence becomes final, Article 21 continues to impose constitutional requirements concerning the treatment and dignity of the prisoner.
That creates the central question underlying Malhotra’s petition: even if the State has the constitutional power to execute a condemned prisoner, does that power extend to using a method that could inflict unnecessary physical suffering?
The Court has now answered that question by declining to invalidate hanging on the existing evidentiary record.
But it has simultaneously acknowledged that the answer could potentially change.
Science could reopen the issue
The most consequential aspect of Tuesday’s ruling may therefore not be the dismissal itself but the conditions the Court has identified for reopening the debate.
A future challenge supported by credible medical and scientific evidence could potentially establish that the assumptions underlying Dina no longer hold.
That could involve comparative evidence concerning the onset of unconsciousness, duration of suffering, physiological responses, risk of botched execution and the possibility of prolonged or unexpected pain.
The Court’s reference to forensic medicine, neuroscience and other disciplines suggests that any future examination would need to be evidence-driven rather than based solely on competing moral arguments.
For now, however, hanging remains the legally prescribed method.
The Supreme Court has refused to declare it unconstitutional and has declined to refer Dina to a larger Bench.
At the same time, it has made clear that constitutional precedent is not necessarily permanently insulated from scientific progress.
The immediate legal challenge has therefore ended, but the larger debate over how the State executes a death sentence remains open — potentially awaiting the kind of scientific evidence that could demonstrate that what was once considered constitutionally permissible has become incompatible with contemporary understanding of pain, dignity and humane treatment.
