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| Death Penalty row reignites | | | Rameshwar Singh Jamwal
Yakub Memon
may have met with
his final fate but the controversy refuses to die down. Each day, one or the other so called celebrity figures of India, Ex Ministers, MP's, both of ruling and opposition parties, and people from different strata of population, having little ideas about the reasons of keeping such harsh punishment in the statute books, give one controversial statement or the other. The debate is likely to intensify further in the coming months as one Project being carried out by some students of National Law University, New Delhi, having little ideas about the likely impact of their study being misused by vested interests to further their cause and hidden agendas. It may also be mentioned that some of the controversial figures from legal fraternity are also likely to fish in the troubled waters by trying to use their so called legal acumen and capacity to swing public mood by use of sophisticated words. Every time, a hardened criminal, in rarest of rare cases, gets close to the gallows, a bunch of these so called champions of individual liberties jump to the growing bandwagon of neo liberates to hog the limelight by such uncalled for comments by which get highlighted by the catchy phrases of media.
Hundreds of times, we hear from those clamoring for abolition of death penalty, abolitionists, you may call them, arguing that it is never a deterrent, that death penalty has failed to deter people from committing heinous offences without disclosing as to from which Indian study they have come to such conclusion. In my study of the subject, I have come across only two studies, both carried out in foreign waters, having little resemblance to our social, economic and political conditions, which are equally divided on this issue. And if Death penalty is not a deterrent, then why in every case, the convict seeks the conversion of his death penalty into life imprisonment, only because for him, death is more dreadful than serving life in prison and the argument does not hold ground. The second argument, as espoused only recently, that the State cannot act as cold blooded criminal in sniffing out a human life, can be stretched to say that there is no justification for killings of enemies by Indian Belt forces as it would amount to Hot Blooded killing then. Are we heading for a situation wherein these people will argue that we should not have killed the terrorists who attacked Dinanagar in Punjab recently or Jammu on innumerable instances and that the killing of terrorists in a terrorist strike was a hot blooded execution as our IPC and Cr.PC does not permit their such killing, that they should have been caught alive and tried by courts and then given only fourteen years life imprisonment, for which demand also the ground work is being laid. And if a person is to be spared for killing even hundreds of people, then why would he settle for hundreds, why not kill thousands or millions, by triggering some nuclear holocaust and then seek clemency on grounds of the offender being a member of minority, of some deprived section, of being a tribal and so on. And how they presume that Life imprisonment is a deterrent more effective than death sentence when there are thousands facing such sentence and even then the heinous offences continue to occur. The debate is of wide import as it involves not only the future of this country and its coming generations but also of the survival of criminal justice system. The argument can be advanced by them that if the system has survived in more than hundred thirty countries that have abolished it, why will it cause destruction over here. Majority of The countries which have abolished it, like those in the European Union, the Scandinavian countries or those in the American and South American Sub continents have not faced the problems being encountered by countries like India. So to try to compete with them only in this respect is a fallacious approach, bound to cause much damage as wrong treatment always aggravates the ailment. State's power and right to punish the offenders for crimes is founded on the principle that if we give the right of punishment to the victim, who otherwise should have the right to do so, it will lead to lawless society and that punishment should be in proportion to the damage done by it, only then the system can function effectively. Ours is a democratic country where the legislature represents the will of the majority and majority in this country want stronger punishments for more serious offences. Laws are the conditions under which people, usually independent, unite themselves in a society, form nations, frame laws and with a view to prevent anarchy, and despotism, where every individual would want to inflict more damage to the violater of his rights, and plunge the society and country into chaos, this power is bestowed on the state. Although the vast majority may not understand the intellectual input given by the Criminologists for coming to such definite conclusions and that there has to a fixed proportion between crime and punishment with the scales tilting a little bit more in favour of more powerful punishment to check more destructive value crimes and the crimes which have capacity to destroy the society are always given more severe punishments.
The end object of every punishment is two fold, one to hold the individual responsible for his acts and to prevent further damage to the society and the second to send a strong message to be those having similar tendencies and designs to desist from nurturing any such notions of committing such offences.
This thinking is based on the centuries old tested and tried fact that human nature is hedonistic or self interested and if somebody enjoys committing a serious crime and there is same punishment, say for one killing or killing a thousand, then he would certainly go for the more serious crime and have more satisfaction.
Unfortunately, in this age of information technology, the media has played a very proactive role in promoting the viewpoint of abolitionists, who, with their speaking skills, have tried to portray the status quoists in this case, or the retentionists, as we may try to refer to them, as some blood thirsty group belong to some primitive society who do not deserve to be called civilized. This group of thinkers, have no ideas about the reasons of such type of criminal behavior and how it can be controlled, why people commit such ghastly crimes and whether we can infact succeed in tackling such tendencies with the lesser types of modes of punishments.
It is well said that the crime in a given society, to some extent, is also the by product of the politics of its nation, a result of process of formulating and administering public policy and since criminality is a byproduct of the political behavior of its politicians, we should be ready for more bigger shocks when we see so many senior politicians pleading for abolition of death penalty just for few votes, by having false notions that such move will get them few more seats in Parliament and that too in an offence where hundreds were killed and also making a mockery of our Parliament, shouting and blocking the hearing of such statement by millions, when the Home Minister was making statement about terrorist attack in Gurdaspur. With such political class sitting in Parliament, we are hardly expected to see the decline of many more such felonies in near future.
The author is the President of Criminologists Society and author of book, " Controlling the Mind of a Criminal, the Yogic way". |
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