Above the fold: Top stories of the day
1. Another Pakistani militant was captured alive and four more shot dead in Baramullah in Jammu and Kashmir.
2. Hardik Patel, face of the Gujarat stir and convenor of the Patidar Andolan Anamat Samiti, has demanded that the government get rid of quotas or "make everybody its slave" and threatened a run on banks by the Patel community.
3. Evidence samples from 2012 go missing in the Sheena Bora murder case.

The Big Story: Making a rare case
Just weeks after Yakub Memon's hanging, the Law Commission is set to submit a report recommending the abolition of the death penalty, except in cases of terror. The draft report was compiled after the commission consulted a wide array of voices, including representatives of political parties, most of whom favoured abolition. The Law Commission's report is welcome, especially at a time when the Memon hanging has embittered a large section of public opinion about India's systems of justice.

Arguments about death penalty being vengeance, not justice, having no deterrent effect and being irreversible have become well worn now. The report also makes a powerful case for abolition based on the way death penalty works in India, starting with the flaws in the "rarest of the rare doctrine". As of April, there were 270 convicts on death row and 64 sentences were handed down last year, suggesting the penalty has been imposed indiscriminately. The report noted that the application of the death penalty has been "excessive, arbitrary, unprincipled, judge-centric and prone to error", and that there is no "principled way" to correct this. It also noted systemic biases against minorities and marginalised groups.

The commission makes an exemption for terror cases, though it suggests a moratorium on death penalties for such convicts. Yet cases of terror are also key examples of the excesses of a discriminatory system. India should take notes from the situation in Pakistan, which lifted its moratorium on death sentences after the Peshawar school attack last December. Since then, the Pakistani state has been on a killing spree, hanging more than 190 prisoners. The moratorium stemmed the tide of state violence temporarily, only to have it break out with greater force once tragedy struck. In the end, the abolition of death penalty rests on the principle that taking a human life is unjustifiable, even when it is done by the state. This remains true in cases of terror as well.

The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest stories
Kavita Krishnan on how the death penalty is used differently for terrorists and for offenders close to the politicl establishment. Dhirendra K. Jha on how India swore off the death penalty after the execution of Bhagat Singh and then brought it back for Nathuram Godse. N Jayaram on the hanging of Dhananjay Chatterjee, whose guilt was never established.

Politicking and Policying
1. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal attacked the Centre from a safe distance at Patna.
2. The Centre unveiled a list of 98 smart cities, many in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.
3. A report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Stimson Centre claims that in 10 years Pakistan will have the largest nuclear stockpile after the United States and Russia.

Punditry
1. In the Hindu, MK Narayanan discusses how the atmospherics around the India-Pakistan talks spelt their death knell.
2. In the Indian Express, C Rangarajan and Govinda Rao discuss how the Union government could turn its own indirect taxes into a de facto goods and services tax at the manufacturing stage.
3. Also in the Hindu, Manu Acharya on how India should develop a more assertive role at the climate change talks in Paris this year.

Don't Miss
Nandini Ramnath on a documentary that describes the history woven into a Naga shawl:
"Every Time You Tell A Story looks at the shawl as a “larger metaphor of what happened to the Ao-Naga people”, Negi said. The 52-minute film regards the shawl as artefact, locus of memory, symbol of pride, and a marker of identity. In a sequence reminiscent of Sameera Jain’s museum-themed documentary If You Pause, Mahanti and Negi also begin their film in a museum, where the shawl and other representations of Naga culture exist as objects of curiosity and appraisal. The inanimate objects give way to more displays of local traditions for the outside world: members of the martial tribe re-enact their ritual dances at a cultural show."