Early yesterday morning, after switching on the television, I began to wonder if Covid-19 had vanished from the country overnight. Not a word about the contagion was mentioned; instead, all channels were dominated by the news of the execution of four rapists in the early hours at Tihar Jail. It seemed like a carnival at the gates of Tihar. Placards proclaiming “We trust the judiciary” signalled a newfound faith in the system. Bizarre slogans, which I now struggle to recall, filled the air. Men and women alike were jubilant. It resembled a medieval circus where public executions drew crowds baying for blood. After seven years of waiting, the Indian judicial system, moving at a tortoise’s pace, had finally closed a sordid chapter of gang rape, brutality, and murder that would shame even the wildest of barbarians, including the Vikings.
Seven years ago, on a wintry night, a young Delhi girl was stalked by six savage men. After thrashing her companion to near incapacity, the brutes gang-raped her in the most heinous and dreadful manner imaginable. That night, India as a nation and we as a society failed her miserably. We failed because we allowed six depraved individuals to violate her physically—she was mauled and torn apart. The brutality was beyond what even wild beasts would inflict. We failed again when we outrageously christened her “Nirbhaya,” meaning fearless. How dare we? How dare we presume she wasn’t gripped by mortal fear when six hellish, debauched men pounced on her, ignoring her pleas, cries, and entreaties, ripping her apart like ravenous wild dogs? How dare we bestow upon her grandiose names, ostensibly to elevate her to a pedestal of courage and bravery, thereby assuaging our collective guilt? She, a frail teenager, could surely do little to resist when six cannibals pinned her down and set upon her in a manner words fail to describe. Yet we call her “fearless”! It sickens me and makes me retch when I hear her referred to as “Nirbhaya.” We should hang our heads in shame. She ought to be known by her given name; her memory must not endure under a pseudonym granted by a hypocritical society. That is the least justice we can offer her.
One can empathise with her parents, who pleaded for the execution of their daughter’s rapists. Their anguished minds could not see beyond retribution, nor grapple with the moral and ethical nuances of jurisprudence. When the mother expressed relief, saying her late daughter had finally received justice, we could understand her feelings. What else could a mother feel? But it makes me wonder when the public declares, “Justice served for ‘Nirbhaya.’” What justice can a dead person possibly receive? Someone claimed her writhing soul would now be at peace. Semantics and fanciful phrases aside, the soul is a mirage we humans invented to appease our longing for immortality—a satisfaction derived from believing a part of us persists after death.
What justice can we give a girl now dead, when we, as a society, collectively failed to protect her while she lived? What justice awaits the teenage Unnao girl, brutally raped and later murdered? What justice can we offer Asifa, the seven-year-old raped repeatedly for days and murdered in a temple in Kathua, Kashmir? How many more individual acts of justice must we pursue for the daily rapes and murders of women and girls in this country? It is offensive to think we can find satisfaction or clear our consciences by invoking the phrase “justice served.” Nonsense!
Yesterday morning, tribal instincts came alive outside Tihar, and television channels, barring a few like Asianet News and NDTV, revelled in the news of the hanging of the four men while simultaneously questioning the foundation of capital punishment in countries like India, which we call civilised. The “rarest of rare” benchmark is a flawed premise. Protesting capital punishment in today’s India would be deemed as seditious and anti-national as criticising Hindutva. The humane Kiran Bedi, the fiery cop who, as the first female Inspector General of Prisons, introduced reforms aligned with a civilised society, was upbraided for attempting to reform the incorrigible and advocating for prisoners’ human rights. It is a primitive tribal notion that prisoners forfeit their rights as humans. One might even hear the hackneyed cliché: “If what happened to the Delhi girl happened to your kin, you’d think differently.”
There is a sine qua non for calling ourselves civilised. We must first eradicate patriarchal mindsets and misogyny from society and teach children from a young age to respect women. If an accused person is found guilty and punished as per the law, that law must either facilitate their transformation during incarceration or acknowledge that retributive justice is not justice but vendetta, as offensive as the crime itself. Look at those baying for the blood of the accused or guilty—it’s a trait of primitive tribal societies. It doesn’t take much to realise that the men vociferous outside Tihar yesterday might readily stalk, violate, molest, grope, or harass a woman if they believed they could escape apprehension or punishment. That is the duality of people: they hunt the victim and later cry for her.
A few months ago, much of the country applauded when the Hyderabad police staged an encounter and killed three alleged rapist-murderers. Like fools, we eagerly accepted their alibi that the men attacked the police before attempting to flee. We were content to believe extrajudicial killings delivered swift “justice.” We failed to question whether a diligent trial confirmed their guilt or if they were decoys planted by the real culprits. Did we consider the anarchy such extrajudicial, instant retribution could wreak on society’s fabric and its legal system? Not a word was spoken thereafter; we moved on—or rather, backward.
When we passionately claim retributive justice for the Delhi girl, believing she has finally received justice, we are lying to ourselves and, dare I say, mocking her soul, if you will. There is no evidence that retributive justice or capital punishment—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—serves as a deterrent. Only uncivilised, barbaric societies, citing antediluvian practices and bizarre texts, justify chopping off hands for theft, stoning for adultery, or decapitation for murder. When societies worldwide have abolished capital punishment, I see no reason why this medieval, retributive punishment should remain on the statute books of a country like India, which claims to be civilised. Lifelong incarceration, with or without the possibility of parole, would torment the criminal, potentially leading to reform or psychological decay.
To quote Henry Ford, “Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.”
