Right to live for a death convict?

Recent article in THE HINDU, or rather the essay by George Orwell, ‘The Hanging’ gave me goose bumps. For a few minutes I was myself witnessing the terror of facing gallows. Immediately arose in me the feeling that the three convicts in Rajeev Gandhi Assassination case indeed must be allowed to live. But soon, the feeling subsided, when I tried to juxtapose the various contexts involved. Perhaps my sympathy for the prisoner in ‘The Hanging’ was more because of sense of patriotism that swelled up on imagining the wrongs afflicted upon, yet bravely taken by, the freedom fighters of Indian struggle of Independence. (The essay was about a situation in the imperialist regime of British in Burma, and though the prisoner has been termed as a criminal, yet it involuntarily takes my imagination to the like hangings of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev and so many more). It is a well known fact that during imperialist regimes, death sentences were more often used as instrument to perpetuate the interests of the rulers and to put off any opposition that dared to rise against them, rather than for ajustice.

Today, India is a free sovereign with a written Constitution, the supreme law of the land, guaranteeing justice to one and all. And it is by the sanctions of this law that capital punishments are allowed in rarest of the rare cases. These are the heinous crimes like rape, murder for robbery, abetment of child suicide or mass genocide, which would stir the soul of any normal and sane person. Recently the agitation by few human right activities and groups to commute the death sentence of three convicts in Rajiv Gandhi assassination case on humane grounds has gained momentum. Tamil Nadu Assembly has even passed a resolution recommending mercy. The case put up invokes Article 21 of Constitution, Right to live, advocating that since there has been exceptional long delay in deciding the fate of convicts, the right to live with dignity is violated in such cases if the death sentence is executed even after so many years of imprisonment. I find this very disturbing. Because the Article 21 itself says that no person shall be deprived of his/her life except by the procedures laid down by law. Then how can mercy be expected on grounds of right to live for a death convict!!

Law stipulates no time limit on the government or the President to reply to the mercy petition under Article 72. So everything in case of Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan and that of Bhullar, has been carried out in accordance with law. It seems that some so called social groups can find an agenda out of anything, and they just politicise the issues to satisfy their hidden interests. In fact I feel that the reasoning capacity of Indian mob is very dismal and it is very easy to control the opinion of a common man. At one hand, we feel repugnant at the very idea of Indian government keeping terrorists like Kasab and Afzal Guru alive, on the other hand we bootstrap to come on streets as and when such terrorists are sentenced to death. This is a completely oxymoronic behaviour from which we must refrain. In fact such agitations are agonising and breach of justice for the kith and kin of the victims of such convicts. I fail to understand how we can forget about the hundreds of victims of 28/11 episode, LTTE terrorist activities, Mumbai train blasts, or the soldiers sacrificed during attack on Parliament, the list is endless. In fact these agitations portrait India as a soft state and make way for incidents like IC814 Hijack.

The issue of ban on capital punishment is a long standing debate in India. So is the issue of method of execution. It is argues that other lesser painful methods like lethal injection and gunshot can be used instead of hanging. However these should not at all be related to the issues of granting mercy to the death convicts and must be decided upon on separate justifications. I myself am against the practice of capital punishment, as it is irrevocable and may lead to grave injustice in case of erroneous judgements. But there are many constitutional ways to resolve the debate via a valid legislation in the forum of democracy – Parliament. However any extra constitutional resolution or agitation does nothing but disturbs the functioning of the executive. Also, there must be a self imposed rule that all the pending mercy petitions must be decided upon in shortest possible time with high priority. But we must learn to respect and have faith in our constitutional machinery and should not disrupt the administration everyday on one issue or another.