Sometime back I had written...a game ending with the conclusion of a prisoner's hanging. The man had bombed the Indian Parliament. I am not sure what happened to that man. If he was pardoned, the news would have shown up in the papers. All the hoopla of reporting exists before the neck is strained and the limbs stop shaking. At least that's how it seems. Today the same media that tries so very hard to get balance of justice to hang heavier on a certain "mediated" side showed me a photograph- a simple snapshot of an accused bomber's sister, caressing the death row man's mother. The women were wearing scarfs. A fraction of their face was visible. Yet that little visible nature was gut wrenching. The bombers have a family who were probably not aware. The bombers probably have children who have just begun going to school. Maybe the bombers never got the red tri-cycle of their dreams.
Do we provide a free ticket to heaven or hell to these bombers? These are the same persons who took the above mentioned sentiments away from hundreds of others because they believed in a cause that required them to blow up children, women, men, vegetables, and dreams. Is then the bomber's mother's tears justified? Absolutely, yes. Wouldn't any mother weep if her government were putting a stopper to his "life"?
I must ask you, "Should our Democracy hang men?"
Snapshot
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1 comment:
i agree - of course the mother and daughter would be devastated, his act doesn't make his family less human and might make it even harder for them to understand their feelings.
about capital punishment - i think the system of justice does 3 things - a) it punishes the offender, b) it deters potential offenders and c) keeps society safe. I don't think its the most effective punishment. i don't know how effective of a deterrent it is and i don't know if anyone can know. but it does make society safer, albeit in a very superficial way, the threat, that one specific threat, has been eliminated.
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