April 16, 2025

The words in the title are used by Judge Anirban Das of Additional District and Sessions Court of Calcutta on 20 January 2025. While delivering the judgement on the R.G. Kar rape and murder case, he wrote ‘in the realm of modern justice, we must rise above the primitive instinct of ‘an for an eye’ or ‘a tooth for a tooth’ or ‘nail for a nail’ or ‘a life for a life’. Our duty is not to match brutality with brutality, but to elevate humanity through wisdom, compassion and a deeper understanding of justice’. In another part of the judgement, the judge wrote ‘measure of a civilised society lies not in its ability to exact revenge but in its capacity to reform, rehabilitate, and ultimately to heal’.

A civilised society is one which is neither revengeful nor retaliatory but humane because of its enlightenment.

In sharp contrast, the judgement given by Judge A.M. Basheer of the District and Sessions Court in Trivandrum gave a judgement pronouncing the twenty-five year old postgraduate student Greeshma to be put to death by hanging for murdering her lover Sharon Raj by poisoning him with pesticide mixed drink. Sharon died after a week in the hospital. He never revealed to the police the name of his lover as the culprit though he knew the unbelievable truth. The judge called, in his judgement, Greeshma‘a devil in human form’ for the heinous crime she committed with definite planning which represented evil in her mind for a person who not only loved her but also tried to save her even in his death. Greeshma was given capital punishment because of the circumstantial and forensic evidences made available by the police despite Sharon Raj not revealing his lover’s name.

The interesting information to be noted here is that judge A.M. Basheer had sentenced four people to death in a span of eight months after he took over as a judge of the sessions court. In one of his judgements, he had pronounced death sentence for a mother and son together for the murder of an elderly woman.

It is equally interesting to note that only one woman was awarded death sentence in the history of free India and executed. RatanBai Jain, then a manager in a clinic in Delhi, suspecting that three girls in the clinic had unacceptable relations with her husband, poisoned each of them to death one after the other. She was hanged to death in Delhi District Jail after the Delhi Sessions Court judgement of 03 January 1955 and after it was approved by the Punjab High Court which had the jurisdiction for Delhi at that time. As far as the country is concerned, the last executions of death sentence were in 2020 though many are waiting for death sentences to be executed.

Ripper Chandran, known as ‘death messenger’, was called so because he ripped open the heads of many whom he killed. He was hanged to death on 06 July 1991. Muthukuthy Chandran from Karinthalam in Nileshwar in Kasargod district of Kerala had committed fourteen murders by hitting on the head of every victim with a heavy metal, in a period of two years. He was identified after the murder of a woman whose son was a witness in Tellichery in Kerala. After the Supreme Court also confirmed the death sentence, he gave a mercy petition to the President of India which was rejected, ultimately leading to his death by hanging.

Many modern day thinkers, philosophers, psychologists and social scientists are against death punishment for any offence including murder or mass killing done by any person. Their first argument is that no human has the right to take the life of another person and the judge himself is taking the life of a human because the convict had taken the life of another. They think that this is an unacceptable contradiction. The words of Anirban Das, judge of the district and sessions court, Calcutta resembles the thoughts of these social leaders. In addition, death sentence does not come under the definition of punishment itself which is meant for reformation, rehabilitation and offers chances to heal a depraved mind. More importantly, an erring human needs to be guided or mentored not to err again. Capital punishment, therefore, does not come under the definition of quality punishment.

It is relevant to define punishment itself. Primarily, punishment is a reduction of freedom. A person who misuses the freedom in any given society does not have the right to enjoy such freedom for obvious reasons of the possibility of misusing the freedom again. Hence, imprisonment as a punishment is used as a tool to reform and not death. In addition, punishment should be an opportunity for the person who misuses freedom for offending another or a group or a society to repair himself through guidance and through the influence of other people. This reason also justifies imprisonment which could be simple or rigorous depending on the need for rehabilitation. Similarly, punishment could be a deprivation of the privileges that a person enjoys in a society which is to be removed or reduced because of the crime that she or he would have committed. The deprivation could be freedom itself or privileges that are available in a society. A famous politician’s voting right was cancelled by the Bombay High court which was approved by the Supreme Court. Further, punishment could be a compensation paid for the loss the offended party could have gone through. Sometimes it could also be monitory compensation. Again, there could be possibilities of fine imposed as a part of the deprivation.

Death punishment, therefore, does not come under a humanistic definition of punishment.

At this juncture, it is useful to refer to a newspaper report about a punishment meted out to a twenty-five year old man for using and storing banned drugs. He was arrested with three grams of M.D.M.A. He was kept in jail for eight months and did not get bail despite repeated attempts. However, after he was charge sheeted, he was given bail by the district court under certain conditions. He was asked to walk through the streets of the city with a placard in hand which exhibited a bill ‘by using drugs and liquor you will lose not only your life but also your family’. The court said that he should walk with the exhibit through the streets during the day for five days as a method of educating the public. The police were asked to take video recording and report to the court later. However, the court order could not be implemented as the culprit was missing.

It is important to analyse this judgement. Why should a person become a laughing stock in front of the general public? Why should anybody want to publicise the punishment meted out to anybody else? What is the responsibility of an erring individual to educate the society? Why should anyone suffer, or even contribute through compulsion, to create a welfare society? Much more importantly, which penal code in the country provides such a system of punishment which the judge awarded? A close examination of such a punishment reveals lack of sensitivity towards an erring member of the society. One can easily note that that person has made an error or broke a rule which in itself is a sign of her or his immaturity or lack of concern for the society. Indeed, he deserves more compassion rather than a ridicule in front of the society.

Much more importantly, the growth of civil societies in the last ten thousand years is the history of refinement in human living conditions. No doubt, there have been plenty of instances where humans went astray, both individually and collectively, from the peaceful ways in which they progressed. History is full of stories of individual humans and collective societies acting very inhumanly, destroying even societies themselves in the processes of such inhumanity. It is from the second half of the twentieth century that several societies in different countries started thinking about humanising rules and regulations that are defined to protect social living. It is in this context that many defined capital punishment as something against humanity itself, both rationally and logically. After all, taking the life of a human because he had taken another’s life does not make any difference between the punished and the one who offers the punishment as both do the same task of taking away a human life.

When societies were not as civilised as they are today and when they were more fragmented in their community living, there have been plenty of punishments which were execution of abject cruelty. Burning at the stake; trampling by an elephant; slicing the body like Ling Chi in China; skin and limbs being removed after being tied to a post like in the Nordic lives; different parts of the body wounded and salt put into it; stones thrown and killed; tied to a rope and dragged under water like what the Dutch did in the sixteenth century; boiling in oil or water as done during the reign of Henry the VIII; injections offered in moving vehicles; putting on a burning gridiron as done in England during thirteenth century; tied to a horse and dragged on; wrists tied at the back of the neck and pulled to dislocate the shoulders; stitched in a sack with biting creeping animals; and of course, white torture by putting immense pressure of threat on the person who is to be punished.

Collective human living seriously considered the after effects of punishments, especially in the second half of the twentieth century and undoubtedly the concept of democracy is responsible for making the systems of punishment more civilised, meaning more humane.

As many as 144 countries have abolished death penalty as they started their twenty-first century. However, there are still some very powerful industrialist countries which still hand down capital punishments. Portugal is a country which abolished capital punishment against all crimes. Similarly, the USSR has no death penalty; England abolished death penalty in 1965. In recent times, some of the African countries like Seirra Leone, Gambia, Central African Republic and Zimbabwe also have abolished capital punishment. Some of the countries which have retained capital punishment have reduced the crimes that may attract it. However, India in its new Nyaya Samhite increased from twelve to eighteen crimes which could attract capital punishment which has been criticised by social scientists as moving away from humanitarian considerations when many other states which received impetus for liberation from India were abolishing death punishment itself.

There is an interesting phenomena which is practiced by judges in courts in different countries. After signing a judgement of death sentence, the judge breaks the pointed nib of the pen on the end of the paper itself symbolizing not only her or his unhappiness in writing a death sentence but also her or his hope that there may not be another chance to write a similar one.

A civilized society, civilised in the sense of life with concern for others with an enlightened respect for all types of living beings, shall not think about putting any human to death however bad a crime that person would have done because there is always an eternal hope that humans are reformable and can be rehabilitated to get back into the humane line of living which will again lead to contributing to the building of a humane society.