For some time yesterday early morning after I switched on
the TV, I began to wonder if Covid-19 vanished from the country overnight.
There was not a word of the contagion, all that burst out on TV channels was
the hanging of the four rapists in the wee hours in Tihar.
It seemed like a carnival at the gates of Tihar. Newfound
trust in the judiciary as placards displayed “we trust Judiciary”. Then all
kinds of bizarre slogans which I now fail to recollect. Men were jubilant, so
were women. It all seemed like some medieval circus where public executions had
taken place and the crowd braying for more blood. The 7 years of wait had
finally come to close and the Indian judicial system that moves as fast as a
tortoise has ground its way and brought to close a sordid chapter of gang rape,
brutality, and murder that may pale the wildest of barbarians even the Vikings.
7 years ago on a wintry night, the unfortunate Delhi girl
was stalked by six savage men and after thrashing her companion to an almost
invalid state the brutes set upon her gang-raped her in the most flagitious and
dreadful way only human beings can think of. That night India as a country and
we as social beings failed the young girl miserably. We failed because we let
six depraved societal beings physically violate her – she was mauled and torn
apart. The brutality that even wild beasts would not do was heaped on her. We
again failed when we most outrageously rechristened her “Nirbhaya”, or the
fearless. How dare we? How dare we presume that the girl was not plowed down by
mortal fear when six hellish, debauched men pounced on her and ignoring her
pleas, cries, and entreaties ripped her apart like hungry savage wild dogs? How
dare we call her fantastic names ostensibly to elevate her on a high pedestal
of courage and bravery and thereby mollify our collective guilt? She, a frail
teenager, I’m sure could do nothing to resist when six cannibals had her pinned
her down and set upon her in the most gruesome fashion words fail to tell. And
we try to believe she was “fearless”! It makes me sick and retch when I hear
the girl being referred to as “nirbhaya”, it must put down our heads in shame.
She ought to be known by her given maiden name, her memory must not live under
a pseudonym the hypocrite society granted her. That is the least justice we can
do for her.
One can empathise with her parents who were pleading for the
execution of her daughter's rapists. Their anguish minds could not have seen
beyond that and the moral, ethical side of jurisprudence. When the mother said
with relief that at last, her late daughter got justice, we could hold out our
feelings for her. What else can a mother feel? But it makes me wonder when the
general public says that “Justice served for ‘Nirbhaya”. What justice could a dead
person possibly get? One said her soul was writhing would now be at peace.
Semantics and fantastic phrases apart, the soul is itself a mirage that we
human beings invented to appease our longing for immortality. A satisfaction we
get when we think a part of us live even after we are dead.
What justice is it that we could give the girl now she is
dead that we as a society collectively failed to provide her while she was
alive? What justice are we waiting to render to the teenaged Unnao girl who was
brutally raped and later murdered? What justice can we now give Asifa the
seven-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped for days and murdered in a temple
in Kathau, Kashmir? How many more individual justice are we to ensure for rape
and murder of women and little girls that happen every day in this country? It
is offensive that we even think of finding satisfaction and expect to clear our
conscience by invoking the end word in such cases- “justice served”. My foot!
We saw tribal instincts come alive in front of Tihar
yesterday morning and the kill TV channels found in the news of the hanging of
the quartet, baring a few channels like the Asianet News and NDTV who
simultaneously dealt with the very foundation of the premises on which capital
punishment continues to be on the statute in countries like India that we call
civilised. The benchmark for “rarest of rare case”, is a flawed premise. A
protest against capital punishment will in today’s India be as seditious and
anti-national as criticising Hindutva. The old and humane avatar of Kiran Bedi
the fiery cop, when she took charge as the first female Inspector General of
the prison, carried prison reforms that were in tune with a society that
claimed to be civilised. She was upbraided for trying to reform the incorrigible
and calling for human rights in prisons. It is an old primitive tribal notion
that believes prisoners do not have their rights as human beings. One can even
ask the hackneyed cliché well if something that happened to the Delhi girl fell
upon your kin you might then think differently.
There is a sine qua non for calling ourselves a civilised
lot. That must first ensure the patriarchal mindset and misogyny are erased
from the society; children from a young age are taught to respect women; if an
accused when guilty of a crime is punished as per law and that very law must
either address his or her transformation in incarceration or accept the fact
that retributive justice is no justice but only vendetta as offensive as the
crime itself. Look at people braying for blood of the accused or the guilty. We
see that in primitive tribal societies. It doesn’t take much thought to
understand that the men who were vociferous in front of Tihar, yesterday would
perhaps readily stalk and violate a woman, molest, grope and harass if a given
situation makes them believe that they can escape being apprehended or
punished. That is the duality of people. You hunt the victim and later cry for
her.
A few months ago much of the country applauded when the
Hyderabad police stage-managed an encounter and bumped off three rapist
murderers. We, like daft, were more than eager to accept their alibi that the
men tried to attack the police posse before attempting to bolt. We even were
content to think that extrajudicial killings were providing speedy ‘justice’.
What we forgot to understand was we are going back into primitivity. Did we
have a convincing trail that diligently tested the accusation those men were
guilty of the crime? Or were they decoy planted by the real rapists – murderers?
Did we realize the anarchy such extrajudicial, instant retribution can cause to
the fabric of the society and its law and jurisprudence? Not a word thereafter,
we moved on – in fact we have moved backward.
Now, when we stand up and be passionate about what we call
retributive justice for the Delhi girl and thinking she finally got justice, we
are lying unto ourselves and let me put it, mocking her soul if you may. There
is no proof that retributive justice or capital punishment, and in primitive
semantics an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth holds good as a deterrent.
Only in uncivilised barbaric societies that still fall for that, quoting
antediluvian practices and bizarre books can think of chopping one's hand for
theft, stoning for adultery and decapitation for murder. When the world over
societies has done away with capital punishment, I do not see why that medieval
retributive punishment should not be removed from the statute of a country like
India which claims to be civilised. Lifelong incarceration with or without a
chance of parole is what would torment the criminal either leading to his or
her reform or pathological 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”.
