Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics 2025
The report marks the 10th anniversary of the effort by the team at The Square Circle Clinic (formerly Project 39A) to document, collect, and analyse country-wide data on capital punishment. In the last ten years, 1,279 individuals have been handed the harshest punishment in the Indian criminal justice system: the death penalty. The Death Penalty in India : Annual Statistics Report (2016-2025) released on 4th February, 2026, presents an in-depth analysis of death penalty in India and maps the evolving nature of the use of capital punishment. Beyond the rhetorical debates around the death penalty, it is a culmination of 10 years of labour to visibilise the granular trends in India’s use of the death penalty.
Process
The report adopts a data-driven methodology consistent with previous editions. Information on death sentences and case developments was primarily collected from news reports, which were subsequently verified using official e-courts platforms of trial and appellate courts. In addition, since 2023, the methodology has expanded to include tracking and analysing trial court judgments to assess their adherence to the Supreme Court’s directives (particularly in Manoj v. State of Madhya Pradesh, 2022) regarding the consideration of relevant sentencing materials such as the accused’s mental health, life circumstances, and conduct. This combined approach ensures both breadth (through media tracking) and accuracy (through judicial verification and judgment analysis).
This special edition of the report also includes 10 years of data collection, analysis and dissemination on the death penalty, all of which we started when we were Project 39A, National Law University Delhi.
