Almost three decades to this day sixteen year old Geeta Chopra , a 2nd year
student of Jesus and Mary College, and her
fourteen year old brother, Sanjay, a 10th standard student of Modern School, left home to participate in a radio programme
called the Yuva Vani on the All India Radio. Two bright young peppy cheerful loved happy youngsters with
nary a care in the world. Two days later their parents were called to identify
their mutilated, bruised, vandalised,
tortured , bodies.
I ask you to close your eyes and bring that moment in front of your eyes.
That moment – the moment when the sheets were lifted from the bodies and the
parents saw their children. The moment which witnessed the death of a family
unit, the death of a mother’s joy, of a father’s pride, the death of hopes,
ambitions, laughter, of life as it was that the family had shared.
In that sepia tinted frame of two murdered dead and two living dead, you now
see the two killers - the rapists, the
vandalisers, the plunderers . The men who murdered not just two innocent teenagers
but a whole family. And then, after having seen all this , you are asked to
pronounce a judgement. For this rarest of rare case will you not say what the hon’ble court read out on a blistery cold
January day in 1981…to be hanged until dead?
The decision to include capital punishment was taken
unanimously by the framers of our constitution – the same people who gave us
our Preamble, the group which included legal luminaries, freedom fighters, the
privileged and the scheduled caste. When
the Law Commission submits its report, which by all accounts will recommend
abolition of death penalty, it will be going against the considered opinion of
those who gave us our constitution.
It is important to remember that the penalty is read
out in only the rarest of rare cases. It is because of this rarest of rare
clause that a research done by National Law University, Delhi found that only
755 people have been executed since Independence. Wikipedia tells us that a
total of 26 executions have taken place in India since 1991. Also important is
that just 4 of the 26 hanged since ’91
have been muslims.
Death penalty is not awarded arbitrarily and in a discriminatory manner.
Fairness has always been an essential part of our system of justice. When the
highest court of the land finally upholds the death penalty order the case has
gone through many years of appeals , arguments, testimonies and travelled a
complex legal maze. It is very rare, nee almost impossible, that an innocent is
given the death penalty.
Amnesty International,
which has been a leading advocate of abolishing the death penalty, maintains an
official stance of “we in no way seek to
minimize or condone the crimes for which those sentenced to death were
convicted. As an organization deeply concerned with the victims of human rights
abuses, Amnesty International does not seek to belittle the suffering of the families
of murder victims, for whom we have the greatest sympathy. However, the
finality and cruelty inherent in the death penalty render it incompatible with
norms of modern-day civilized behaviour….”
Look at the
irony inherent in this statement. The finality
and cruelty inherent in the death penalty render it incompatible with norms of
modern-day civilized behaviour… The irony lies in the talk of civilized
behaviour towards those who have broken each and every mores of the civilized
world- those men , and women, who never once paid heed to the finality and
cruelty of their actions which resulted in death, who indulged in behaviour which is incompatible with
civilized societies. Hasn’t Amnesty itself given the reason why the ultimate
penalty should be given to those who do not subscribe to societal norms?
Sitting
in the comfort of our living rooms and weighing the pros and cons of capital
punishment is akin to discussing whether anaesthesia should be administered to
a patient going in for surgery or not.... Those not undergoing the surgery will
never feel the pain. Besides the highest court of the land this should also be decided by those who have gone through the
trauma of losing a loved one to the act of gruesome murder, rape, mutilation .
Remember, for capital punishment to be handed out the crime has to come under
the category of rarest of rare.
We should
ask the survivors of 26/11 if they are able to sleep at night without hearing
the staccato of gunshots; we should ask the families who lost their loved ones to
Ajmal Kasab’s madness, we should ask the mother of Nirbhaya if she will ever be
able to forgive the ‘juvenile’ who rammed an iron rod inside her daughter.
And we
should ask ourselves: how cruel is it of us to even think about the possibility
of letting people like Billa Ranga, Ajmal Kasab and their ilk to live on? What
if they repeat –in jail or outside- what they have shown they are capable of
doing?
