JOIN USThe award of the death penalty to 38 persons convicted for the 2008 Ahmedabad serial bomb blasts is a case of justice gone berserk and overboard. The bomb blasts had claimed 56 lives and caused injuries to many more and were considered to have been an act of retribution for the killing of over 1,000 people in the 2002 post-Godhra carnage. The bomb blasts were the most savage and cruel way of retribution which targeted innocent people who had nothing to do with the 2002 carnage of Muslims. Even those who were guilty of the Gujarat pogrom could not be dispensed street justice. Killings cannot be replied to with more killings.
By the same principle, the bomb blasts convicts should not have been dispensed with the same retributive justice that they dispensed to people, and there’s certainly no justification for such a collective sentence. It is the first time in India’s judicial history that so many people have been awarded the death sentence in one go. It is a massacre by the rope and the legal sanction for it does not make it any less unjust and outrageous. It is not an assertion of the majesty of law or a victory for justice because no humane law asserts itself nor justice wins when they take lives. It must be noted that even while handing out sentences to the main perpetrators of the Naroda Patiya massacre of 97 people during the Gujarat riots, the judge had then said that the death penalty went against human dignity. For their bloodcurdling crimes, former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani and the Bajrang Dal’s Babu Bajrangi were given 28 years and life sentence, respectively. It is another, and completely shocking, matter that Kodnani was acquitted of her crimes in 2018, and Bajrangi has been out all these years on bail, claiming ill-health.
The law that prescribes death for death and the idea of justice that expresses itself through it can only be vengeful and retributive, not humane and reformative. If human beings were perfect, there would be no need for laws. It is because they are imperfect and do wrong things that laws are needed to correct them and to give them the opportunity to mend themselves. They are not to be finished off for doing wrong, and the right to reform should not be denied to anyone. A penal law that sanctions death is crude and primitive, and most countries of the world have advanced from that stage. We should not taint ourselves by sending so many people to the gallows in one go. Hopefully, a better and more civilised sense of justice will prevail.