Muhammad Ajmal Amir Kasab told the
Court: “It’s all wrong. I am not guilty”. Yes it’s all wrong and he deserves
punishment. We Indians and the judiciary endorse the same. But….
Now, Muhammad Ajmal Amir Kasab is
hanged to death. He killed some people simply positioning himself on a common
young man’s platform. An illiterate platform indeed! But the judiciary killed him positioning
itself on an elite platform. A platform for the intelligentsia! Dharma ! Truth !
Ahimsa ! We see killing in both the platforms. Some rejoice. Some sought
relief. Some neutrally kept silent.
K. Unnikrishnan, father of NSG
commando Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan who was slain in a 26/11 terror attack in
Mumbai, confessed in public that the execution of Ajmal Amir Kasab is not a
matter to “rejoice over,” but a “legal necessity.”
What Mr. Unnikrishnan showed is not
seen shown by the great Indian judiciary. The legal necessity could be justified if the judicial mechanism sentenced him rigorous punishment until
death. Why should we kill? Who has given you the right to kill? In the whole
globe so many countries have either abandoned or proclaimed moratorium to
hanging, but our great India has decided to kill the person who killed. But the
story is not always the same. Yes, the story of Ahimsa continues…..
Shashikumar Velath,
Director-Programmes, Amnesty International India, Amnesty International said
the execution of Kasab would undo much of the progress India made over death
penalty. “Today’s execution means India has taken a significant step backwards
and joined that minority of countries that are still carrying our executions,”
Mr. Shashikumar further said that the Amnesty
International was deeply disconcerted both by the unusual speed with which the
mercy petition was rejected and the secrecy that surrounded Kasab’s execution.
The resumption of executions in the country came barely two days after the UN
General Assembly’s human rights committee adopted a resolution calling for a
global moratorium on the death penalty with a view to completely abolishing it.
He also urged the Union Government to establish an immediate moratorium on
executions with a view to abolishing death penalty.
The ‘Peoples’ Movement against Death
Penalty’ headed by Justice VR. Krishna Iyer described the execution as an
“unconstitutional act” of the State. Saying that Kasab was brainwashed in the
name of God to unleash unmindful act of terror, the organisation, in a
statement, said poverty and ignorance of the “young boy” was exploited and he
was used as a killing instrument by the hatred politics of a neighbour State.
The Hindu in its editorial said
that the most compelling argument, however, is this: the application of the
death penalty is, as the Supreme Court itself acknowledged earlier this week,
increasingly arbitrary. Capital punishment has become, as the medieval
philosopher Maimonides many centuries ago warned it would, a matter of “the
judge’s caprice”. It is also simply not true that capital punishment is
integral to fighting terrorists. The absence of the death penalty in, say,
France and the United Kingdom has not made these two nations softer in their
ability to combat terror than the U.S. The grief of 26/11 was personal for many
in this newspaper; like others, members of staff grieve for lost friends. Yet,
the horror of 26/11 ought not stop us from dispassionately debating the need
for the death penalty.
Now,Ajmal Kasab is no more. He gave way to the other Kasabs
expected to follow him. Before bidding farewell, he had only one message to
share before he was hanged on Wednesday. “Tell my Ammi [mother]”. What? What? What?
……..
Dr.C.T. William
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