n the Delhi gang rape-murder, some of the mitigating circumstances favouring the convicts are youth, absence of similar criminal antecedents, the possibility of reform, and an impoverished family background. In the face of these mitigating circumstances, the death penalty should not have been invoked and is not legally justified. What purpose does the death penalty serve? There is no evidence that it deters murder more than imprisonment for life. In fact, the evidence shows the contrary. Hanging a few rapists will not make the streets safer for women, or make them more secure in their own homes. It will, however, camouflage governmental apathy and provide a much needed distraction from the core issues of women’s safety. It will allow politicians to say that they are tough on crime against women and get away without doing anything at all to address the causes of such crime. It will also allow us to vent out righteous indignation, and then rest content with the misogyny around us. It is not surprising therefore that most feminists oppose the death penalty for crimes against women. Both law and morality privilege reformation over the taking of life. Reformation is difficult and expensive. The taking of life is easy and cheap. But if compassion, mercy and faith in humanity are still virtues that we prize highly, it behooves us to invest in reforming convicts instead of taking the easy way out by hanging them from their necks till they are dead. Once we abandon reformation, punishment becomes synonymous with revenge and puts us on the same moral plane as the murderer. To become a more humane and compassionate society, and leave a better, less bloodthirsty world behind for our children, we must curtail our instinct for bloody retribution. State sanctioned violence does not eliminate or reduce violence. It just perpetuates it. In the Bachan Singh case, the Supreme Court sounded a note of caution: “Judges should never be bloodthirsty. Hanging of murderers has never been too good for them.” Neither is it for society. Yug Mohit Chaudhry is a human rights lawyer, leading the death row abolitionist movement in India.
Posted on: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 05:17:35 +0000