The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a PIL seeking abolition of the practice of executing death row convicts by hanging and replacing it with less painful methods such as “intravenous lethal injection, shooting, electrocution or gas chamber”.“We are not persuaded that a case has been made out for referring the decision of the three-judge bench in Dina to a larger bench for reconsideration of the constitutional validity of Sections 354 (5) of the CrPC/ 393(5) of the BNSS (dealing with the death penalty by hanging),” a Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta said.While dismissing the PIL filed by senior counsel Rishi Malhotra in 2017, challenging the validity of Section 354(5) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Now replaced by Section 393(5) BNSS), which provides for hanging till death, the Bench said the Centre was free to undertake a comprehensive review of the existing method of execution.The Bench, however, clarified that its judgment was not the final word on the subject and that the issue may be re-examined in future if “compelling scientific, medical, or empirical evidence” emerged on alternative ways to carry out the death sentence.“We also observe that nothing contained in this judgment shall preclude the Union government should it consider it appropriate from undertaking a comprehensive review of the existing method of execution through an expert body comprising specialists in law, forensic medicine, neuroscience, criminology, and allied disciplines with a view to examine whether any alternative method of execution better serves the constitutional objective of minimizing unnecessary pain while preserving the dignity of the condemned prisoners,” it noted.The PIL referred to the 187th Report of the Law Commission advocating removal of the present mode of execution from the statute. Malhotra contended that the best way to give the death penalty was lethal injection and that 49 out of 50 states in the US have adopted lethal injection.Malhotra contended that hanging involved prolonged pain and suffering compared to the other two methods. He wanted the top court to “declare Right to Die by a dignified procedure of death” as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution.As the Centre opposed a petition seeking removal of the present mode of execution of death row convicts by hanging from the statute, the Supreme Court had on October 15, 2025 questioned its status-quoist attitude on the contentious issue.In an affidavit filed in April 2018, the Centre had defended “hanging by the neck till death” — the practice of execution of death sentence, terming it a safer and quick method for termination of life of a death row convict. Other modes of execution of death sentences such as lethal injection or firing squad, if bungled, could lead to results that could be called barbaric, inhuman, and cruel, it had said.The Centre said, “The procedure followed for execution by electrocution or lethal injection or firing squad could be just as inhumane or barbaric to another person. As far as likelihood of execution getting botched up is concerned, the statistics show that hanging with more advanced procedures is far safer than techniques such as lethal injection.”It maintained that hanging was consistent with the State’s obligation to ensure the process of execution was conducted with decency and decorum without involving degradation or brutality of any kind.