As Mumbai gunman Ajmal Kasab was hanged this week, few shed tears. But that doesn't make his sentence less inhumane
India applied the death sentence this week for the first time since 2004, as Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only gunman to have survived the 2008 Mumbai attacks, was hanged in the city of Pune.
India is among the 39 countries that voted against a UN general assembly draft resolution calling for a moratorium on execution on Tuesday, hours before Kasab was executed. It seems the country is yet to be convinced that justice can be delivered without a primitive judicial sentence that amounts to official murder. Back in 1983, the apex supreme court of India upheld the constitutionality of the method of hanging in a judgment that read that it involved "torture, barbarity, humiliation or degradation".
Somewhere down the line, fear of an eruption of an extra-legal vigilante system throughout the length and breadth of this huge nation in the absence of a grave punishment has worked as a deterrent against abolitionist measures. Given the pressure of cases that pile up in the court system, there remain serious lapses in judicial proceedings. The use of DNA as evidence is hardly a common phenomenon excepting some high-profile cases; the death penalty is handed down on a majority basis rather than a unanimous bench decision; and, most importantly, many convictions for death sentences are based entirely on circumstantial evidence. But India is determined to retain capital punishment, despite serious flaws.
There is virtually no official information available on the number of people sentenced to death in India. Amnesty International believes that approximately 105 people were handed execution orders in 2010 alone. What surprises many legal luminaries is the fact that in the 1980s, the supreme court has sought to restrict the use of death penalty by characterising it as a punishment reserved only for the "rarest of the rare" cases. The doctrine has not had the desired effect, with the same court confirming capital punishment in 40% of cases that it handled in the decade starting from 1980, against 37.7% in the previous decade.
Kasab's hanging has a political fallout too. Many of the regional parties dominating the nation's political fabric, including rightwing Hindu nationalists, overtly favour capital punishment. And yet executions are delayed inordinately, with convicts rotting in prison, uncertain of their fate. Even though this stretches the parameters of the Indian penal code, publicly raising concerns about this will be construed as shedding tears on the grave of the heartless guy who was indoctrinated to snuff out as many lives as possible in Mumbai four years ago.
Few in India will bother to pause and wonder whether Kasab's execution will bring closure to a heartrending chapter. How is it that no questions were raised on the improbability of a 10-strong squad hitting a highly fortified financial capital with impunity? And why did no heads roll for the lapses that saw the entire top operational brass of the local police eliminated, in spite of receiving high-grade security cover? Was Kasab a politically convenient convict for the ruling establishment, not only made to jump the queue of 300-odd prisoners in death row, but also denied the final right to challenge the president's decision to reject his mercy plea?
Mahatma Gandhi openly proclaimed his opposition to capital punishment, saying: "I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take life because he alone gives it." It is time for India to once again learn from him, and do away with the death penalty.