What keeps me awake at night...

The High Court announced its verdict on Ajmal Kasab today. They seem to believe that he deserves some kind of punishment. I am impressed, really. Oh and it took them all of 3 years to arrive at that conclusion and it will take another 7 years before he MIGHT get punished. These guys are exceeding my expectations.

What is justice and why does society mete out punishment to wrongdoers ? These are important questions to ask and answer. (Disclaimer: the discussion here is NOT based on my reading or interpretation of the law, I claim absolutely no formal exposure to these concepts)

Okay, the answer to “why punishment” is not as obvious as it seems. Remember, no amount of punishment can ‘right’ a ‘wrong’. Punishing a murderer does NOT bring back the man he murdered. Period. And yet, as a society, we believe in delivering punishment. Why ?

There are two fundamental pillars underlying punishment : The concept of “retribution” and the concept of “deterrence”. Retribution arises from our fundamental subjective understanding of the ideas of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. I won’t go into morality and its origins, but let’s just say that MOST (=sane) people such as you and me believe that taking an innocent man’s life is fundamentally ‘wrong’. So punishing a man who does so, reinforces our beliefs and provides mental satisfaction. In other words, “retribution” is inextricably linked to the emotional aspect of a human being and it is that, which indeed, makes us human. Take the simple example of two children eating candy bars: Child A snatches Child B’s candy, which rightfully does not belong to him. Now, the parent scolds Child A and punishes her. Child B is served retribution.

The second pillar of punishment is the idea of “deterrence”. By serving punishment to criminals, you deter other potential criminals from committing similar crimes. If a mass murderer is hanged, then society believes that the knowledge/witnessing of the hanging will make other psychopaths to think twice before they embark on their planned executions. In the example of the children, a third Child C, who sees Child A being punished will think twice before snatching a candy bar from any of her peers.

The important thing to realize is that these are not purely ‘logical’ concepts. They go deep into the fundamental idea of being ‘human’ and ‘moral’, so ANY person who does not understand or much less, believe in them, can be considered mentally deranged. In fact, the mind of a criminal/psychopath lacks this very concept of justice. Park this conclusion in your mind because I intend to bring this up later.

Now, I make the claim that DELAYING punishment flies in the face of the very fundamental notions of justice described above. Essentially I argue that if justice is delayed, then the very purpose of punishment is simply not served. It is almost as if, there is no need for punishment any more. Take the case of retribution. In the simple example of the children, it absolutely makes no sense for the parent to punish Child A, a whole YEAR, after her having snatched the candy bar. Think about it. Child B has long since moved on and it is very likely that he won’t even REMEMBER the incident. Since it has been a year , the punishment does not seem to “matter” any more. This is a very important point. We cannot talk of retribution without simultaneously accounting for the TIME dimension.

Now consider the deterrence argument. Since the parent punished Child A after an year, Child C who was deviously clever and observant came to the following conclusion : “ Whoa! So it takes more than a year for the grown-ups to catch up. Nice! In a year’s time – I won’t even BE in this neighbourhood. I can hardly predict what’s going to happen next WEEK, so who knows how things will be a YEAR later. Let me take my chances and snatch that candy bar !! “ Essentially, a DELAY in punishment has exactly the opposite effect. It serves as an INCENTIVE to criminals to take their chances and go ahead with their crimes.

To summarize, justice that is DELAYED serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever and contradicts the two basic pillars of punishment. Lets look at the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Ajmal Kasab murdered innocent civilians in cold blood. That fact is undisputable. Now, Kasab will file an appeal with the Supreme Court and then the mercy plea with the President. It will be 2018 by the time he gets “punished” (will that word have any meaning any more?)

Ask the families of Ameena Begum or Mira Chatterjee, two of the many innocent women massacred at CST, if they care. Find out if it matters anymore for the kin of Inspector Vijay Salaskar or Constable Yogesh Patil who died trying to save lives. Ask the father of Vinod kumar who lost both his wife and son together in the senseless killings. These are normal people like you and me. And they didn’t deserve to die. They didn’t.

What kind of twisted perverted society do I live in ? To me, a society that condones delay in serving punishment is no different from the dark mind of a deranged criminal because, as I demonstrated earlier, the DELAY represents a basic travesty of the very two pillars of punishment. In effect, it goes against our fundamental notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and finally questions our basic notions of being ‘human’. And guess what ? This inhuman society finds itself going all out to protect and provide for the mass murderer. The Times of India reports that Rs 45 crore has already been spent on the upkeep of his ‘special’ jail. At a daily expenditure of Rs 9 lakh, the tax payer will ‘sponsor’ the killer to the tune of Rs.200 crore by 2018. [Oh, did I mention that the innocent people whom he murdered in cold blood received half his DAILY expenditure as ‘compensation’]

And please please, spare me the ‘eye-for-an-eye-leaves-the-country-blind’ crap. What is the point of having eyes if we don’t even blink in the face of injustice ?