Capital Punishment

This is in justification of my previous blog. As a part of our academic syllabus we have to read Krishna Iyer’s Biography. Having read it when I was in the 2^nd year, I cannot say he and his ideas impressed me. He’s considered to be one of the most prominent of judges who added a new dimension to PIL (Sunil Batra’s case). He has further in his book dedicated a whole chapter to Capital Punishment and every time I read that chapter I disagree with every line that has been written. He talks of criminality as a way of behavior, he attributes a person’s crimes to mental illness. Therefore he suggests that criminals must be treated like the ill in a hospital. He has done a lot for prison reforms and for prisoners in general. He is all for human rights and abhors Capital Punishment. He has suggested several means of curbing crime, the same old theories on punitive, retribution and preventive measures. India is a country with a varied assortment of people and an extensive set of sub-labels attached to them, hence there isn’t one particular solution that will apply to all. Each person has to be dealt with individually. When it comes to criminals the judiciary takes into consideration facts surrounding each individual case before passing a judgment and it has been very well established that capital punishment shall be given only in the rarest of rare cases. When Dhanajay’s case was decided and he was sentenced to death, we saw protests of all kinds all over the country asking for his sentence to be commuted. Finally the sentence was carried out.

Gandhi said if we all follow the principle of an eye for an eye, the whole nation would be blind. That is a cliché, which is not applicable in today’s context. Sometimes when a person commits crimes that are heinous, it does fall upon the judiciary not only to do justice to the aggrieved family but also at the same time send the right message to other “prospective criminals” as to what extent the law can go to bring justice to the masses. That being said, you wonder what happens to the family of the convicted? Well the convict didn’t give two hoots when he did what he did, because he thought he wouldn’t be caught. He never planned for the alternative, i.e. what would he do if he were caught. Not once does it cross his mind that not only is he jeopardizing another’s family but also his own. In such circumstances, our sympathies are equally divided between both families. But it is not our emotions that are to decide what course is to be taken. Pardoning once for a crime that is punishable with death will not only instill confidence in the criminal that law is growing soft, but also that he was lucky once and that he can be lucky again.