Capital punishment in India is a legal penalty for some crimes under the country's main substantive penal legislation, the Indian Penal Code, as well as other laws. Executions are carried out by hanging as the primary method of execution as given under Section 354(5) of the Criminal Code of Procedure, 1973 is "Hanging by the neck until dead", and is awarded only in the 'rarest of cases'. Currently, there are around 488 prisoners on death row in India. The most recent executions in India took place in March 2020, when four of the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder perpetrators were executed at the Tihar Jail in Delhi. History In the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1898 death was the default punishment for murder and required the concerned judges to give reasons in their judgment if they wanted to give life imprisonment instead. By an amendment to the CrPC in 1955, the requirement of written reasons for not imposing the death penalty was removed, reflecting no legislative preference between the two punishments. In 1973, when the CrPC was amended further, life imprisonment became the norm and the death penalty was to be imposed only in exceptional cases, particularly if a heinous crime committed deems the perpetrator too dangerous to even be 'considered' for paroled release into society after 20 years (life imprisonment without parole does not exist in India since it is too expensive to freely feed and house dangerous criminals all their lives, and eliminating the possibility of parole after a life sentence removes the positive and rehabilitative incentive to improve behavior; all criminals sentenced to life imprisonment in India are automatically eligible for parole after serving 20 years, as per IPC 57), and required 'special reasons'. This significant change indicated a desire to limit the imposition of the death penalty in India. The CrPC, 1973 also bifurcated a criminal trial into two stages with separate hearings, one for conviction and another for sentencing. Capital offences Capital punishment in the Indian Penal Code Capital punishment in non-IPC offences List of capital offences challenged in the court Categories of people exempted from capital punishment Process Trial court After the completion of proceedings as prescribed by the Code of Criminal Procedure, the judge pronounces the judgment in a case under Section 235. In case of conviction of the accused, there shall be a mandatory pre-sentencing hearing as according to Section 235(2),