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moral superiority. Rather than letting a criminal rot in jail as punishment, thereby giving them time
they can use to adequately reflect on their actions and potentially become a better person, putting a
criminal to death simply reinforces the medieval maxim of "an eye for an eye." We should be past
that.
Besides, no matter how cruel someone's actions, no one deserves to die for them. Even if a person
was sentenced to death for killing multiple people, should they be forced to endure the same fate as
their victims? If we kill people who kill other people, we create an unending cycle of killing. Wishing
death on someone is possibly the worst thought a person could have, and if we wish death on a
murderer, what makes us better than they? I want to believe that, as a society, we are better than
that.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the Union government
spends Rs.10,000 per person every year on prisoners. The rarest of rare case doctrine for
application of the death penalty has become routine. Death penalty is no longer the exception,
but the rule. According to the NCRB’s latest records, 1,455 convicts, or an average of 132.27
convicts a year, were given the death penalty from 2001-11. Most death row convicts are from
marginalized communities—in Chaudhry’s words, it’s a matter of “class and colour”. All of them
are represented by legal aid—lawyers who get paid a total of Rs.900 for defending a murder
case.
Mercy is not dependent on just deserts. Justice and mercy operate in mutually exclusive realms. It is only
when justice demands that punishment be inflicted that mercy comes into play. Mercy tempers justice,
makes it less exacting, more humane. Excluding a fellow human being from entitlement to mercy has
nothing to recommend it except a very base blood lust that we encourage at our peril. If we have to
become a more humane and compassionate society, and leave a better, and less blood-thirsty world
behind for our children, we have to curb our instinct for retribution.
Executing Kasab in the name of the Indian people will only feed a base instinct for retribution that will
make our society more blood-thirsty, vengeful and violent. It will not contribute to our safety or well-
being in any way. On the other hand, keeping Kasab in jail for the rest of his life and treating him like a
human being allows for the possibility of him regaining his humanity, repenting his crime and atoning for
the harm he has caused. That would indeed be a big victory in our battle against terrorism. It would also
show our humanity.
The Naroda Patiya massacre in Ahemdabad on 28 February 2002 killed 97 Muslims. It is the massacre
infamous for the gory stories of a pregnant woman disemboweled and raped, a 20 day child killed, and so
on. If this massacre is not fit to be considered “rarest of the rare,” what is?
The principle of jurisprudence lays down that a person cannot be punished twice for the same crime.
Bhullar has already served 12 years in jail and now the consequent execution would strictly violate this
principle of jurisprudence. Prolonged incarceration of a death row convict awaiting his execution qualifies
as cruelty and violates Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.
Killing a mass murderer is not going to bring back those he killed, and I do not understand how the cause of justice is
served. The idea of justice is not revenge but to bring a sense of closure to the victims, not give them the gross feeling
of revenge. Justice should be restorative, not retributive.
Making the legal process less cumbersome and time-consuming, making it more independent from the
pressures of the government of the day, punishing police and investigation agencies found coming in the
way of justice, are some measures that are going to be far more effective in preventing heinous crime than
hanging people to death.
Sometimes, capital punishment is actually counter-productive. It has the potential of turning the accused
into a martyr, which is then used by his or her defenders to spread his or her message. Hanging Babu
Bajrangi is going to be used by some fanatics to make him into a hero in the cause of fanaticism and
religious violence. Letting him rot in jail forever, is justice that will deny him a heroic halo.