In Capital Punishment: A penological barbarity (DH, Oct 17), Justice V R Krishna Iyer, former Supreme Court judge, has argued against the death penalty. He has opined that if it happens, it will be the grandest event of the century. He alludes to Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, who abhorred the death penalty and the Amnesty International, which has been undertaking a sustained and uncompromising campaign against it.

Justice Iyer’s argument rests on the premise that no one shall be deprived of life by the state. Even in the case of the most horrible and revolting crimes, the criminal should be given a chance to reform; something that would be lost forever with execution. In addition, a majority of world nations like the United Kingdom have done away with the death penalty.

The results of a survey done in the United States found that murders and other crimes were more in states where death penalty is in force than in states where it had been abolished. This effectively nails the lie that the possibility of death sentence would deter prospective murderers from indulging in crimes.

Indian Presidents have always been loathe to disposing off mercy petitions as most of them might have been against capital punishment. R Venkataraman, in his memoirs, has stated that the very term “Presidential pardon” is a misnomer as the President has to go by the advice of the Cabinet, whose views and guidance he has to seek before making decisions. A P J Abdul Kalam also sat on most of the petitions that he inherited from his predecessors. He rejected just one petition, that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who had been convicted of rape and murder of a young girl.

Does the death penalty really need a relook in our country where rape and murders are commonplace and terrorists have a free run? The alternative to death penalty is a life sentence, which in India usually extends to a period of 14 years with the prospect of early release on grounds of good behaviour — such as  during Independence Day, Republic Day, etc.

In some countries, sentences of a hundred years are handed out without possibility of parole. This, in effect means that in India murderers, even those whose crimes should naturally come under the rarest of rare cases would be back on the streets after serving time. We may not have issues if they are genuinely reformed during their time in jail. Without possibilities of that happening, the society pays a heavy price when the criminals walk free.

Take the case of terrorists, who usually indulge in mass homicide as in the Mumbai blasts and kill innocent people. Are they eligible for clemency? Further, the law in India has always resorted to death penalty for crimes and situations of exceptional nature. As a result, the number of people sent to the gallows after Independence is hardly substantial. This is cited to bring home the fact that the death penalty is not the norm and very few offenders have had to face it. As for the contention that the state should not deprive a citizen of his right to life, should this not hinge on the severity of the crime?

If every murderer were to get the noose, the country should be full of hangmen and there would have been no need to hunt high and low for one as it happened in the Dhananjoy Chatterjee case. While Justice Iyer is not alone in advocating the need to scrap the death penalty and ask for a relook, a great deal of thought has to go into doing away with it altogether in India, where diabolical crimes have been on the rise in recent times.