Polite Indian

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The Delhi High Court has awarded death to Santosh Kumar Singh, the man convicted for raping and murdering Priyadarshini Mattoo, a 23-year-old law student 11 years ago.

Earlier, the CBI pressed for death penalty before the Delhi High Court for Singh, convicted for committing rape and murder of Mattoo.

As I have argued before, capital punishment should be abolished. When will we understand that this sort of punishment has no place in a civilized world.

UPDATE : Shivam has more on it.

Anoop Saha revisits the Dhananjoy Chatterjee case after two years since his execution on 14th August 2004. He goes on to disprove every argument that led to his killing…

Two years later, I want to prove wrong, each and every argument that led to his killing, in a situation that is not very different from notorious public execution in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and rural India.

The most chilling part of his analysis are the ending lines of his post…

Assuming for a moment, if Dhananjoy was indeed ‘nirdosh‘, can we ever be able to forgive ourselves? Two years later, we should all hang our heads in shame. His last words were, “ami aparadhi na, Ishwar apnader bhalo koruk (I am innocent, I am not a criminal. May the Lord bless you).” That’s enough to send a shiver.

Can we all not see why capital punishment needs to be abolished?

Update 10/11/2006:

Incidently the World Day against death penalty is on Oct 10 (the day I posted this). Found out about this after posting this entry.

The sentence to hang Mohammed Afzal has once again brought to fore about the relevance of capital punishment. I think that the capital punishment has no place in a civilized world. I agree with what this Indian Muslim has to say.

It is not a point of contention whether Afzal guru is guilty or not. I have a similar debate with atlantean. I can understand why such emotions run high but that doesn’t justify killing someone. Gandhi once said “An eye for an eye will make the world blind”. This is so very true. To reciprocate an evil with another is not civilised and that is what pranay is trying to say here.

The reasons I think Capital punishment should be abolished is

• No one individual or a state has the right to take alife.
• Capital punishment hardly act as a deterrent.
• It leaves no room for verdict reversal in case proof of innocence appear later on. Think about this for a moment…Is any judiciary in the world infalliable?

In case of Afzal Guru there are enough indications that the trial might not have been fair. It is not a question of whether he is guilty or not. That is for the court to establish.
I agree with Shivam here when he says Afzal should not be hanged…

For the simple reason that capital punishment is a violent punishment and for the state to resort to capital punishment is to legtimise the use of violence as a means to an end - which is what the terorrist does as well.

Another interesting point he makes is

For the simple reason, as Praful Bidwai points out in Tehelka, Afzal’s crime was aiding the attack, which is not punishable by capital punishment under the law he was booked with, POTA.

So why was he given capital punishment?

According to The Other India, It is the reason given for capital punishment by the judges is wierd

The Supreme Court has held that “The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.”

Since when did the judiciary start basing on “collective conscience of the society”, whatever that is, and not on the law? Isn’t it similar to catering to lynch mob mentality? Striken out after realitycheck suggested it might be illegal to criticise the individual judgement in such a way.
From a pragmatic view point as well the death sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment.