‘No human has the right to dispense death to another, whatever the circumstances’: The human rights lobby’s war cry is at a feverish pitch.
In their blinkered view the Government and courts are extensions of a bleeding-heart humanity and not impersonal institutions. Their point is, mercy and compassion, not law and justice, should be the reigning sentiment of Judges and Presidents when delivering sentences even to proven prolific killers of the worst kind. The agony of the victim, most often the nation itself thanks to mass terror, is of little or no consequence, whereas the inhuman perpetrator is entitled to the criminally ironic, but seemingly lofty, protection of ‘Human’ right. It is really strange that while the victims did not have any choice of life, their killers have so many options!
An even more ridiculous position is the much editorialised call: Vendetta is not justice! Really? If that were so, then why do we need courts at all, why should we harp on rule of law and why at all should we stick to the worn out ‘law will take its own course’ discourse? The penal laws of the land render justice only by punishing the guilty. Now, any punishment can be regarded as vendetta by the accused. Why classify only capital punishment as ‘revenge’? A fine for a traffic violation, jail term for some crime and life imprisonments etc could all be deemed tit-for-tat and, therefore, taboo!
The demand for commutation of death sentences is in itself a self-goal by the human right lobby. If it is agreed that a criminal is deserving of a life term that is as much a ‘violation’ of human right, the justification for the noose is only a few legal and moral knots away. Indeed, it is possible that a criminal may actually prefer to hang in quick time rather than hang on in a stinking cell till natural death. Again, the jihadi suicide squads that deliver wholesale carnage had already made their pacts with death and even reserved their places in paradise and were only on the last leg of their earthly journey. Their reunion with their long dead mates in murder must be hastened, not held back.
Time is the culprit. To kill or not to kill is not the question. Rather, ‘when’ or ‘how soon’ is the only relevant point, so long as death penalty is in statute, if only as a rarest of rare option. Of course, looking at their plight just through the prism of the present, death row convicts may seem eligible for relief particularly if they have been under the ‘lingering shadow of the hangman’s noose’ for long. Delays diminish their past crimes, heinous as they may be, in the midst of a people with distracted minds, dissipating memories and a disturbing indifference to macro issues. Reason why many public causes soon get reduced to a few affected individuals’ fight for justice, unless there is some breaking news on that ‘vertical’. Only swift justice can put paid to all such protracted dilemmas, pervert arguments and public amnesia.
The much touted pain of the criminals’ near and dear is outweighed by the greater pain of the victims’ relatives awaiting justice for that equally long period. But judicial and official double standards combined with political duplicity also queer the gallows. There must be judicial consensus and consistency that preclude long ropes and also ensure even ropes. Presidents must use their rubber stamp, be it either way, in quick time. Justice delayed is justice denied and it works both ways. And no petty provincial politics when it comes to those who waged war against the State by attacking Parli or by killing civilians, CMs, ex-PMs and army, cops on duty. Nor can extra-constitutional authorities make personal pleas for pardon, over-ruling judicial verdicts. The SC is not MSingh.
Am I noose-happy? The best judge is the one sitting inside us. And this moral question looms over all. The answer lies buried in a maze of more questions. What do you do to the ‘juvenile’ bus rapist, when he is very likely to be out in all virility in a decade or even earlier if some politico in power wants to celebrate Gandhi Jayanthi the ahimsa way? How do you react when there are more condemnations for Afzal’s execution than for the terror strike that he engineered? How can one knock sense into H.Rights champs who decry the ‘secret’ hanging of Kasab and likes when jihadis never give advance notice of their own violent advents? Will any jawan or cop tread on lands ridden with mines and court death if he knows his cowardly killer will slip from the noose and laugh all the way to judicial immortality? On the contrary, is there not an incentive for instant justice at encounters and public lynchings, given the softness of the law, its dispensers and its makers? And if the law is so shackled, will not rapists, murderers, terrorists and sundry outlaws themselves become the law?
The latest Hyderabad blast and Prabhakaran child’s episode are chilling pointers to the unfathomable depths and dimensions of cause-effect. Call it justice, call it vendetta, but the retributive cycle is unlikely to abate. The unremitting blood trail is well-set and open-ended in this violent world of ours. Law, rights, revenge and reason are all just commercial breaks in this morbid reality show!
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