New Delhi, Sep 25 (IANS): A human rights group Wednesday said capital punishment was against all civilized norms.
The Working Group on Human Rights (WGHR) said death penalty embodies the idea of retribution, which it said was as violent as the offence for which one is convicted.
The WGHR said in a statement that there was no scientific or empirical basis for claiming that death penalty had a deterrent effect on the incidence of crime including sexual offences.
It said that during the second inter-governmental peer review of India's human rights in May 2012, the UN Human Rights Council made 169 recommendations to India, of which 11 related to death penalty.
Human rights lawyer and WGHR member Vrinda Grover said: "The spectacle of death sentence distracts from ensuring that the state institutionalizes systemic change in the legal system, which alone can create deterrence for violence against women."