THE country’s top court said it will execute people who sabotage electricity supply, reversing recent steps to rein in the use of the death penalty, Xinhua reported yesterday.

Under a new legal interpretation by the Supreme People’s Court, death can be ordered in extremely serious cases where people are killed or injured, Xinhua reported.

Executions can also be ordered when direct economic losses exceed US$131,500, when power is cut for six hours or longer, affecting industrial production or more than 10,000 households, or where there are “other serious consequences that endangered public security,” Xinhua said.

Those causing damage to power supplies through negligence can also be sentenced to up to seven years in prison, the report said.

The order follows recent attempts to reform application of the death penalty, which is applied for a range of crimes from bribe-taking to murder.

The Supreme People’s Court took back the sole right to approve executions at the beginning of the year, and has said death sentences should be give only in the most egregious cases. Last month, the court said it would crack down on the uneven application of the death penalty in different regions.

(SD-Agencies)