It has already been the 21st Century and science and technology have reached the zenith of success. Man has been a part of this sophisticated society with all the comforts at his finger-tips. Despite of all the advancements, many people are getting dragged into the vicious cycle of crimes and murders. There might be infinite number of reasons for a person to do so be it jealously, anger, frustration, and what not. In the Contemporary society, as humans tend to lack moral values in many ways, the rate of wrong doings in India keeps on increasing day by day. Especially in extremely severe cases happening, there needs to be something that can provide Justice to the innocent one who suffered, and the best possible way in our opinion is the “Death Penalty”.
Death penalty, also called the Capital Punishment, is the execution of offender sentenced to death after conviction by a court of law of a criminal offence. It is the highest penalty awardable to an accused; generally, it is awarded in some specific cases of murder, rapes, treason etc. India, being a country with the second largest population in the world, is practicing secularism for years now and it started even before it was legally introduced by our constitution. Punishment conveys the message to criminals that what they have done was wrong, and even gives them an opportunity to apologize and reform with their behaviors.
All around the world religious groups have varying views on the death penalty. Despite an unambiguous commitment to non-violence in both Hinduism and Buddhism, there is ongoing controversy within those traditions about the permissibility of lethal punishment among scholars. There is a rather common Old Testament, that is, to take a 'eye for an eye,' while the New Testament exhorts us to “turn the other check”. And while Islam is generally regarded as compatible with the capital punishment, the Quran’s emphasizes on forgiveness and not on Retaliation. While many European countries urge an ethic of Rehabilitation in their criminal justice systems, many jurisdictions in the United States stand firmly in favour of capital punishment for serious crimes committed.
The first ever hanging in Independent India was in the Mahatma Gandhi assassination case in, back then, 1949, that of Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte. There have been a total of thirty executions since 1991, the most recent of which for the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder case were carried out in 2020. This is one of the cases which reinforces the role of those who are rooting the death penalty for cruel crimes. There is no better example than this. Even now the level of violence involved in the crime is shivering us. This is the first thing that comes to mind just after hearing the word 'Rape' from any Indian. No one in this world can imagine the helplessness, sorrow and anger of the girl who was raped and succumbed to death after enduring hardships, and of her parents who are fighting to get Justice for their child for prolonged years. After 8 years of the incident, finally the accused were executed and the whole nation celebrated. The satisfaction we all felt and the complete lack of compassion in our hearts for the rapists is evident about the importance of capital punishment. This verdict, of the widely known “Nirbhaya case”, gives hope to many more parents, relatives and people for rightful judgment of the other pending cases.
Even in this pandemic scenario where we are facing lots of difficulties each and every day but cases of sexual harassment exponentially rising. A teenager of 13-year-old Sundargarh district girl has recently been gang-raped by Biramitrapur's inspector-in-charge, Anand Chandra Majhi, along with other police station officials at the police station. She had come to see a fair in Biramitrapur region on March 25 but as it was cancelled at the last minute due to the lockdown so she failed to return home and roamed near the bus stand when a police patrolling team spotted her and took her to the police station. She was dropped at her home the very next day. Yet she was called everyday to the police station, and was assaulted by them over and over again. She later got pregnant following which Majhi forcibly terminated her pregnancy. Director General of Police Abhay had filed the case against them. He was suspended one day after a lawsuit was brought against him and five others, including the doctor who had performed the abortion at a community health centre, stepfather of the girl and two local youths, on June 22.
The above discussed issues are few examples from the never ending list. To sum up our point of view, death penalty is not against humanity in any case. People should definitely pay for the sins they committed in the right amount, no more, no less. Also, by proper justice, we make sure the deterioration of would be wrongdoers. According to the famous Italian philosopher Thomas Aquinas, by accepting the punishment of death, the offender is able to expiate his evil deeds and so escapes punishment in the next life. It demonstrates that the death penalty can lead to some forms of rehabilitation. So, at last but not the least, we would like to conclude by quoting- 'We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged!'