Strange as it may seem, the four convicts who were executed early on Friday morning for their diabolical role in the gang rape and murder of Nirbhaya in 2012, met their end earlier than other death row convicts.As of December 31, 2019, there were 378 prisoners on death row in India. Before the Nirbhaya convicts’ hanging on Friday, Yakub Memon – who was convicted for his role in the 1993 Mumbai blasts – was the last person to be executed, in 2015.The question to be asked is why the Nirbhaya convicts were under pressure to exhaust their legal remedies rapidly during the last few weeks, while other death row convicts were not.It is not as if, in terms of chronology – either of the their offences or the confirmation of their sentences by the Supreme Court – the Nirbhaya convicts were the first four among India’s 378 death-row convicts. Indeed, it is possible to guess that the 374 other death row convicts, and those who have been sentenced to death by trial courts since the beginning of this year, are in different stages of availing their legal remedies.The Nirbhaya convicts’ mercy petitions were rejected by President Ram Nath Kovind between January 17 and March 4 this year. The president received the relevant recommendations from the Ministry of Home Affairs one or two days prior to their rejection. Before the rejection of the Nirbhaya convicts’ mercy petitions, President Kovind had rejected the mercy petition of only one death row convict, Jagat Rai on April 23, 2018. He had received the relevant recommendation from the Ministry of Home Affairs on July 12, 2017. In this case, the convict was found guilty of killing seven members of the family of an informant, who had refused to withdraw a First Information Report filed against him for the theft of his buffalo. The victims included five children, besides the informant and his wife. The Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence of Jagat Rai and his co-accused, Deepak Rai on September 19, 2013. Even seven years later, Jagat Rai has not yet exhausted the post-mercy petition rejection legal remedies available to him. In the case of his co-accused, Deepak Rai, the president is yet to reject his mercy petition and it is not even pending before him.Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta,Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh. Photo: PTIFormer president Pranab Mukherjee rejected the mercy petitions of 42 death row convicts during his tenure. Of them, only three have been executed: Ajmal Kasab, Mohd Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon. Of the remaining 39, the death sentences of at least 15 people were commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court in the Shatrughan Chauhan v Union of India case in 2015, claiming the benefit of supervening circumstances like undue delay in the disposal of their mercy petitions and mental illness. The remaining are in various stages of availing their legal remedies.Also Read: Nirbhaya Hanging: Were All the Convicts Equally Complicit in the Crime?Hence, it is important to question why the legal remedies available to death row convicts to challenge their impending execution were exhausted speedily in the case of the Nirbhaya convicts. In other words, why did the Nirbhaya convicts jump the queue in order to face the gallows on Friday, much against their volition?The answer has to be found in the argument advanced by solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who represented the Tihar Jail authorities before the Supreme Court, while appealing against the Delhi high court’s judgment restraining the jail authorities from hanging the convicts separately.The jail authorities had sought permission to hang those convicts who had exhausted their legal remedies, even if their co-convicts were yet to exhaust their remedies. Mehta’s contention was that people were “losing faith” in the effectiveness of law, as seen during the celebration of the Hyderabad encounter (in which four alleged rapists of a veterinary doctor were shot dead by the police) and therefore, prompt execution of the death sentence is the answer.The Supreme Court bench of Justices R. Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A.S. Bopanna which has adjourned this matter is unlikely to consider the merits of Mehta’s plea as it would be treated as infructuous following the execution of the convicts on Friday. But anyone following the Nirbhaya case would admit that Mehta’s reasoning was perhaps behind fast-tracking the legal remedies to which the Nirbhaya convicts were entitled to.Supreme Court of India in New Delhi. Photo: PTIFor students of law, however, Mehta’s reasoning makes very poor legal sense. There is no adequate data or survey on the impact of speed of execution over public opinion on the question of effectiveness of law, and on what basis that view changes. On the contrary, if against a general background of huge delays in criminal justice and over 400 people languishing on death row, four convicts are cherry-picked and executed out of turn based on media frenzy, people may conclude that the law is rigged and that it is vulnerable to the influence of extraneous factors such as politics. If so, logically, won’t this actually further erode rather than improve the confidence of people in the law?Also Read: ‘Capital Punishment Cannot be the Solution to the Problem of Women’s Safety’Experts suggest that improvement in timeliness across the board – from petty offences to capital offences – would certainly inspire greater public confidence, but the isolated speeding up of selected events in which the powerful are interested is unlikely to have a positive effect. According to some experts, those states of the US that still retain the death penalty – and where the law’s delays are not an overall issue – have moved from an average of six years between sentencing and execution in 1984 to 20 years now. Execution takes place rapidly in autocracies, and as countries become more democratic, the time between sentencing and execution increases rather than decreases.Indeed, Mehta’s reasoning should make one wonder how both the Hyderabad encounter and Friday’s hanging could have led to celebrations. It is inconsistent and simplistic to suggest that the celebration of the encounter conveyed the public’s lack of confidence in the law, while that of Friday’s hanging reaffirms the public’s faith in the law. Celebration of the killing – whether by encounter or hanging – can hardly be considered an expression of the people’s confidence in the rule of law.