In Uttar Pradesh, the high-profile Meerut blue drum murder case has concluded with a trial court sentencing Muskaan Rastogi and Sahil Shukla to the death penalty. The legal proceedings surrounding the killing of Saurabh Rajput reached their final judicial conclusion after approximately 13 months of detailed hearings. In India, capital punishment is reserved exclusively for the most heinous and severe offenses, which made this particular court ruling a subject of widespread national attention. Against the backdrop of this significant sentencing, an examination of the diverse legal mechanisms governing executions across major nations around the globe offers an insightful look into contemporary penal practices.
The Framework of Capital Punishment in India
The standard criminal justice architecture in India relies on hanging by the neck as the statutory method for carrying out judicial executions. Under the procedural provisions of Section 393(5) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, whenever a court pronounces a death sentence, the formal judicial order mandates that the convict be suspended by the neck until life is extinguished. This supreme penalty cannot be handed down arbitrarily and remains strictly circumscribed by statute to rare, extremely grave crimes. Historical tracking of such executions shows that since gaining independence, India has put 720 convicts to death on the gallows. The most recent instance of hanging in the country took place in 2020, when 4 individuals convicted in the Nirbhaya case were executed.
Varied State Jurisdictions Across the United States
Within the United States, the execution of condemned prisoners is not governed by a single uniform standard, but rather depends on individual state statutes and regulations. Capital punishment is not in force across all American states, and the jurisdictions that retain it follow differing protocols. The primary and most frequently utilized technique in modern American executions is lethal injection. Additionally, specific state statutes permit alternative execution methods under certain conditions, including the electric chair, firing squads, lethal gas, and hypoxia induced through nitrogen gas inhalation.
Dual Methods and Official Secrecy in China
In China, the penal regime carries out judicial executions through two primary operational methods: lethal injection and death by firing squad. Nevertheless, the administration does not make official statistics and public records regarding capital punishment openly accessible. Because of this absolute lack of public disclosures, establishing an exact accounting of how many individuals are executed each year or determining how often each specific method is employed remains consistently difficult for external observers.
Hanging Protocols and Scrutiny in Japan
Japan remains one of the few highly developed economies that continue to maintain and implement capital punishment within its criminal justice system. The Japanese penal code specifies hanging as the sole mechanism for carrying out death sentences. However, the operational execution protocols in the country, particularly regarding institutional transparency and the practice of giving death row inmates extremely short advance notice before execution, have frequently drawn sharp criticism from global human rights organizations.
Beheading Practices in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia has long maintained the legal tradition of beheading as its hallmark method for enforcing capital punishment. Findings published by Amnesty International in 2025 note that alongside beheading, execution by firing squad is also utilized within the country. The broad implementation of capital punishment by Saudi authorities, together with the wide range of offenses that carry the death penalty under their legal system, continues to provoke serious concerns among international human rights monitors.
Public Executions and Hanging in Iran
In Iran, death sentences are legally administered by hanging the condemned individual. Documentation compiled by Amnesty International for the year 2025 reveals that certain executions in Iran were carried out in public spaces before onlookers. International rights groups have repeatedly raised objections over the escalating frequency of executions in the country, persistent flaws concerning the fairness of judicial trials, and the pervasive lack of transparency surrounding the entire capital punishment process.
