DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI underlines the what and why of capital punishment.
Today India lives in an extraordinary ambience, in which provocation for evil carries a premium while virtue stands at a discount.
With the help of a few headlines from the national press, we try to substantiate the fact: a London-based story informs that one-third of the world food is wasted. It costs global economy $750 Bn/year while 870 million people go hungry daily. Says so a UN report. No drinking water, electricity or sanitation in 20% of rural houses. India has 50% of the world’s modern slaves. Why the Government is dragging feet on graft courts? Parties got Rs. 4,900 crore in donations in 8 years, 75% of it is ‘untraced funds’. One in 30 MPs face murder charges. For the rest of India it is 1 in 1,061. Ratio of netas accused of crime is far higher than that of aam aadmi. MP mantri does 2,559 shilanyas in 8 hours. Engineers’ ill-gotten wealth surpasses 2G Scam payoffs. It seems we are running the government. – New Delhi High Court Chief Justice. Love and sex claim more lives than terror. So says the all-India data for 2012. Many Muslims arrested, not many convicted – Government data. Official death toll break-up in UP till October 17: 46 Muslims and 16 Hindus. 126 such incidents in 3 weeks. SIT snubs Modi, seeks death for Maya Kodnani. Food prices rose 157% between 2004-2013. Killed daughter Nidhi for honour, says remorseless father.
BRUTALITY CRITERION
We feel we have inadvertently wasted a costly newsprint by reproducing the said news. But without this perspective, you might have missed the points we want to underscore.
In the meantime, the Supreme Court of India has come out with the view that brutality should not be considered by the judges as the only criterion for awarding death penalty.
It made us sit up and say what we want to submit forcefully. Before reading the operative parts of the judgement it has to be recorded that it was a 3-judge bench that has given this ruling. It consisted of Mr. Justice HL Dattu, Mr. Justice SJ Mokhopadaya, and Mr. Justice MI Eqbal.
Writing the judgement Mr. Justice Dattu said: “In a civilized society a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye ought not to be a criterion to clothe a case with ‘rarest of the rare’ jacket and the court must not be propelled by such notions in a haste resorting to capital punishment.”
The verdict continues: “Our criminal jurisprudence cautions the courts of law to act with utmost responsibility by analysing the finest strands of the matter and it is in that perspective a reasonable proportion has to be maintained between the brutality of the crime and the punishment….”
The judgement further reads: “The number of deaths or the factum of whole family being wiped off cannot be the sole criterion for determining whether the case falls into the category of rarest of rare. We cannot lose sight of the fact that brutality also cannot be the only criterion for determination whether it falls under the rarest of rare categories.”
TOO-HUMANITARIAN
To us, as a common man, this too-humanitarian judgement, embellished with avoidable sarcasm, smacks of “hate the crime, not the criminal”. Islam is not a votary of tooth for tooth or eye for eye. On the contrary, the Islamic standpoint is: Murder of a person is murder of the entire humanity while saving a human life is tantamount to saving the entire mankind. We are of the concerted view that if a judge errs in forgiving, he is not liable to be pulled up. But if he errs in awarding disproportionate punishment, he deserves it.
Thirdly, respect for human life should be ingrained in a person to such an extent that he volunteers to confess his crime and requests to be cleansed of the blot on his life. A feeling of shame coupled with repentance should be of such a degree that he or she, from within, revolts and begs for proper punishment from the State.
If the State succeeds in inculcating consciousness in individuals, both men and women, then and then alone India will be a model society and people would love to live and die here. This is the real panacea of the ill-health of the countrymen. No legal mechanism can do this. It all has to be done in the family, particularly by the mother, father and those who call the shots in the family.
What goes without saying here is that the Indian society must be modelled on foundations that positively discourage vice and the varieties of vice and actively promote virtue and the umpteen varieties of virtue. That is one of the effective ways to keep our flawed democracy from derailment.
THERE’S LIFE IN DEATH
Thirdly, whether you agree with us or not, that is beside the point. The point we emphatically want to drive home is: capital punishment deserves to remain on the statute. It guarantees life, a life free from marauders, renegades and rapists. To quote the Qur’ān: “There is life in death.”
Fourthly, capital punishment to a crook in a dark room much before dawn does not, and will not, take us anywhere. The execution must take place in broad daylight and on a thoroughfare so that the onlookers may see it with their own naked eyes that this is what would happen to him or her if he or she crosses the Rubicon.
What has strengthened our conviction in this regard is the rampant promiscuity, the ever-galloping intolerance and the highest degree of corruption especially in the higher echelons of society. Our view is: nobility exists in human genes. By nature and by birth man is noble. He or she is not wicked by nature. What has to be done is accentuation of nobility and discouragement to wickedness. And the mother’s lap is the best university for inculcation of these higher values.