Hang your convict yourself, your honour

In the "rarest of the rare cases", the hangman returns to news. Awarding the capital punishment, after lengthy deliberations, numerous bench hours, THEY strike the sentence through the paper and satisfy themselves of delivering justice to the victims' family and bolstered the deterrent for such dastardly killing. But brutal act of actual killing once again to be executed by someone who is paid for, many times less than THEM; keeping the historical tradition of getting the dirty work done by lesser humans. The only explanations the great scholars of law put forward are death as a deterrent and justice to the victims' survivors(learned from The Hindu editorial). Simply put, to incite fear and revenge.

The whole exercise for revenge seems a quagmire. Someone does a massacre hatched in someone else's mind in response to/to protest someone else decision/policy. Some other awards revenge to be executed by someone else. An act of revenge is a totally individualist mental make-up. So it is understandable if individuals clamour for revenge and dreaded punishments. A deep feeling of grief, insecurity, weakness overcome the better judgement of an individual, which carves for revenge, not always a completely futile exercise. But for a state to honour this sentiment of its citizens simply cannot be progressive and humanist. A state must guard its citizen against crimes and chaos. The best possible way is yet to evolve, detention/prison/even life-imprisonment are not for revenge but as deterrent. Otherwise, the law would sentence confiscation of property in response to theft, sexual assault for rape, tit for tat. Crime control and establishing peace should be the motto of the law of the land not taking vengeance for the victims. In the wake of this argument "capital punishment" seems to be barbaric act rather than an egalitarian instrument of social control.

Argument of death as a deterrent in favour of death sentence to a terrorist or extremist is abhorrent. These unfortunate people have a far better chance of being gunned down in some encounter or drop dead in some custodial interrogation rather than reaching the most sluggish and infamous system( judicial, of course) and being awarded the capital punishment. Most of them are suicidal, while some other take this as a glory to their cause. In return the state gets to kill a pawn in the chessboard while the mastermind tries to fan the passion of other pawns in the aggravated air. Even if the mastermind is being judged, it should be remembered that the cause of conflict is what caused the terror. Death as a deterrent wont either work for rapists. It is a well-known fact that criminal commit crimes cause culpability is not conviction. Otherwise even seven years in jail is no lesser scary for few moments of infatuation or male ego etc etc... But the "Mr. innocent" politians and Law professionals know more.

Finally, nobody has a right to put off a life. Those are disillusioned who carried out this inhuman act. THOSE who sentence the inhuman act on these disillusioned are no less disillusioned. Action is same, primary cause is same, only the belief, the conviction is different. In the former the belief is struggling for a greater cause, for people or religion, conversely the later's conviction is the state enshrined law and order. But if THEY are are convinced of the sancity of their action, let THEM soak THEIR own hand with blood even if in the rarest of the rare cases. No one should carry out the dirty job for THEM. Let not a hangman kill a complete stranger, for a supari of Rs **** per month. Let the Judges come down to the gallow to avenge the killing..