DEATH PENALTY NEEDED OR NOT?

Of late, there is a heated debate going on in the country as to whether our society should still insist on capital punishment as the highest penalty for the accused person convicted of heinous crimes. In terror deaths, some of the accused persons have been sentenced with death penalty by trial court and upheld by Apex Court viz., Supreme Court of India. In some of the cases even the President of India rejected the mercy petition of the accused persons awaiting execution. It is a fact that the said penalty has been removed from the statute in many countries at the moment and maximum penalty they have contemplated under the law is life imprisonment.While the affected parties at the receiving end are forcibly arguing for the execution of accused persons without any further delay, on the other hand a few intellectuals, NGOs and the elite of the society are not in favour of executing people under any circumstances. The News paper reports (Times of India, Sunday, September 4, 2011) contain the following headline.

“ Apex Court again dwells on Capital Punishment as Deterrent “

Admitting the U.P.Government appeal, a bench of Justices Markandey Katju and C.K.Prasad said: “we are prima facie of the opinion that this falls in the category of rarest of the rare cases in which death sentence should have been given.Here in this case one Alok Varma known for gambling, drinking and kidnapping brutally killed his wife and four children aged between 2 and 10 years. It was also alleged that the man had a lurking doubt about her fidelity. Similarly, in another case, the supreme court had admitted a petition seeking imposition of death penalty on 7 persons who brutally killed a young couple – Manoj and Babli inJune, 2007 for marrying in defiance of the khap panchayat in Haryana’s Karora village.While it is true that 'eye for eye' is not a modern concept on the subject of legal prudence, deterrance alone can bring sense to the perpetrators of heinous crimes brutally committed even in the midst of uncotrollable rage. I for one would therefore advocate the existence of such capital punishment to those convicts after their confirmation by the apex court on solid and sound grounds proved beyond an iota of doubt. Mercy application before the Governor and the President needs to be disposed of within a period of two months and the execution carried out within a month thereafter with a view to avoiding complication and pressure in future from various quarters on ground or other.