Wednesday, September 27, 2006

capital punishment

thats the bugbear thats been raised recently, with all the usual suspects clamouring for their voices to be aired on a public forum. the issue at hand is the shortly to be executed logistics guy for the terrorists who were too incompetent to blow up the indian parliament a few years ago. talk about the sins of your bosses falling on your shoulders. i suddenly like my job a lot better.
i was never convinced either ways about the justification for capital punishment nor the arguments made against it. lately i've been thinking that its probably a more severe form of punishment to give the guy a life term. not the 14 year version we have here in india, i'd rather have the life term actually mean, being sentenced to jail for the rest of his natural life without any hope for parole or reduced sentences for good behaviour.
reading 'shantaram' was an insight into life for an ordinary guy in the jail system in this country. if you aren't rich / powerful enough to get yourself a cushy life behind bars then you've pretty much had it. if the guy is really so poor that he can't get himself a decent lawyer, as the anti-capital punishment brigade would have us believe, then we can rest assured that he won't be enjoying the comforts of cell-phones, television, air conditioning, home-made food, gyms and personal trainers within the confines of the hell hole that is tihar.
another faction tells us that if the guy is executed by the state there is a serious possibility of him being raked up as a martyr to some cause or the other. its a crazy enough country for this to actually happen. i say why take a chance, keep everyone happy; short of releasing the guy and let the fellow rot in the relative obscurity of the state dungeons.