‘World Day Against the Death Penalty’
-Fr.
Cedric Prakash sj*
The International
Commission Against Death Penalty (ICDP) enunciates four major reasons why
the death penalty should be abolished: (i) the risk of executing innocent
people exists in any justice system, (ii) the arbitrary application of the
death penalty can never be ruled out (iii) the death penalty is incompatible
with human rights and human dignity (iv) the death penalty does not deter crime
effectively.
Today the ‘death penalty issue’ is a
major one in our country. On July 30th Yakub Memon who was convicted
for the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts was hanged to death in the Nagpur
Central Jail. All his pleas for mercy
fell on deaf ears including the Supreme Court. A petition signed by over 300
eminent citizens to the President of India that he grants clemency did not
evoke a response; these citizens cited procedural lapses and “disturbing aspects of this case which make
the award of death sentence of Yakub Memon as grossly unfair, arbitrary and
excessive”.As his final days drew near, a sense of perversity seemed to
have gripped sections of Indian society. TV anchors were literally baying for
his blood; newspapers screamed “vengeance”; some sadist took ‘selfies’ outside
the jail not to miss out on an “important moment of history”.
On October 1st, a Special
Court awarded capital punishment to five of those convicted in the 2006 Mumbai
train blasts. There is a strange logic though: those who bay for the blood of
Memom and the like- become totally “dumb” when it comes to the ‘masterminds’ of the Gujarat Genocide of
2002 and of the several fake encounter cases which followed; these roam about
with immunity and impunity; some hold very high offices of the land; some have
been reinstated and even been given promotions. The Vyapam scam case which has
already taken the lives of more than forty individuals and the Lalit-gate
scandal are conveniently swept under the carpet. Like the Dadri incident, we
hear daily of attacks on dalits, tribals, minorities and women all over.
Death penalty is no solution for any of
the above perpetrators; the tragedy is that ‘justice’ seems to be very
selective; public ‘opinion’ is so easily manipulated, that the sense of fair
play and objectivity gets clouded in passion and subjectivity.
No act of violence can be justified;
more so, when the victims are innocent people.
These dastardly acts have to be condemned; but two wrongs have never
made a right, just because a person has committed a particular crime, the
answer is not the death penalty.
The State has the duty to protect the
‘right to life’ of every single citizen. This is enshrined in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and in the Constitution of India. By espousing
capital punishment, the State equates itself with the perpetrator. ‘Amnesty International’
regards the death penalty as ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading’. Last August, the
Law Commission of India recommended the abolition of the death penalty –except
in terror-related cases. Today 140 countries (two- thirds of the world) have
abolished the death penalty. It is time that India does so immediately too!
October 10th
, 2015
(*Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ is the
Director of PRASHANT, the
Ahmedabad-based Jesuit Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace.)
Address: ‘PRASHANT’, Hill Nagar, Near Saffron
Hotel, Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad – 380052 Phone: (079) 27455913, 66522333 Fax: (079) 27489018
Email: sjprashant@gmail.com www.humanrightsindia.in
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