The Registrar, Supreme Court of India & Others … Respondents WITH WRIT PETITION (CRIMINAL) NO.137 OF 2010 C. Muniappan & Others … Petitioners Versus The Registrar, Supreme Court of India … Respondent WITH WRIT PETITION (CRIMINAL) NO.52 OF 2011 B.A. Umesh … Petitioner Signature Not Verified Digitally signed by NEETU KHAJURIA Versus Date: 2014.09.02 17:22:04 IST Reason: Registrar, Supreme Court of India … Respondent 1 WITH WRIT PETITION (CRIMINAL) NO.39 OF 2013 Sundar @ Sundarrajan … Petitioner Versus State by Inspector of Police & Others … Respondents WITH WRIT PETITION (CRIMINAL) NO.108 OF 2014 Yakub Abdul Razak Memon … Petitioner Versus Registrar, Supreme Court of India & Others … Respondents AND WRIT PETITION (CRIMINAL) NO.117 OF 2014 Sonu Sardar … Petitioner Versus Union of India & Others … Respondents 2 JUDGMENT Chelameswar, J. 1. I have had the privilege of reading the draft judgment prepared by my esteemed brother Rohinton Fali Nariman, J. With utmost respect, I am unable to agree with the view taken by him that a review petition filed by a convict whose death penalty is affirmed by this Court is required to be heard in open Court but cannot be decided by circulation. The background facts and the submissions are elaborately mentioned by my learned brother. I do not propose to repeat them. 2. Extinguishment of life of a subject by the State as a punishment for an offence is still sanctioned by law in this country. Article 21 of the Constitution itself recognizes the authority of the State to deprive a person of his life. No doubt, such authority is circumscribed by many constitutional limitations. Article 21 mandates that a person cannot be deprived of his life except according to procedure established 3 by law. Whether Article 21 is the sole repository of the constitutional guarantee against the deprivation of life and whether it is sufficient for the State to merely prescribe a procedure for the deprivation of life by a law, or whether such a law is required to comply with certain other constitutional requirements are questions which have been the subject matter of debate by this Court in various decisions starting from A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras, AIR 1950 SC 27. The history of such debate and the historical background in which such constitutional protections are felt necessary have been very elaborately discussed by my learned brother. Therefore, I do not propose to deal with the said aspect of the matter. 4 3. Section 531 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (hereinafter referred to as “IPC”) prescribes various punishments to which offenders are liable under the provisions of the IPC. Death is one of the punishments so prescribed. Provisions of the IPC prescribe death penalty for various offences as one of the alternative punishments for these offences2. For example, Section 302 prescribes death or imprisonment for life as alternative punishments for a person who commits murder. Similarly, Section 121 prescribes death penalty as one of the alternatives for an offence of waging or attempting to wage or abetting to waging of war against the Government of India. 4. Apart from the Penal Code, some other special enactments also create offences for which death penalty is one 1 53