Skip to main content

Capital Crimes



Seven prisoners in the state of Arkansas in the US are on the death row. They are awaiting the lethal injunction in the next eleven days. It is considered to be a humane way of putting a convict to sleep. US is among the top ten countries when it comes to executions globally, just behind Iran and Saudi Arabia. Nineteen states of the United State of America have the capital punishment. On the other hand, European Union countries have abolished the death sentence altogether.
What is wrong with capital punishment as a way of safeguarding the interests of citizens? Countries around the world still trust the death sentence to keep violent crimes in check. It is considered as a lethal deterrence to crimes of passion. It is also backed, in some cases, by religious philosophy. Has it actually worked? Crimes in countries like China have not come down, even with well-publicized executions.
The logic behind the capital punishment is very simple: Nobody has the right to take life of another human being but the state. This skewed logic is the reason behind why it doesn’t work. Killing by the state sends out a wrong message- killing is definitely the answer to violent crimes. The due process of law is the only consideration that divides the countries of the East and United States when it comes to capital punishment.Otherwise both set of countries still depend on an ancient value system to justify killing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Principled Nitish

Nitish Kumar is called a political parasite by RJD spokesperson Nawal Kishore during a discussion on NDTV 24x7. Kishore's point was that Nitish does not have the grassroot support to win elections on his own and therefore piggybacks on other parties. In 2005, with the help of BJP, Nitish became the Chief Minister of Bihar for the first time. The alliance worked in the next elections in 2010. But just before the 2014 Parliamentary elections, Nitish broke from BJP on the issue of Narendra Modi being elevated as the party's choice of PM. Nitish stayed in power with the help of outside support from Congress and RJD. In the next Assembly elections held in 2015, the Mahagatbandhan swept Bihar with a two-thirds majority and Nitish was back as the Chief Minister for the third successive time.Finally, last week Nitish decided to break the alliance with RJD and Congress over corruption charges on Tejeshwi Yadav and re-align with BJP to remain CM. There are two principles on which Nitis...
Post a Comment
Read more

Syncretic Culture

The Club of Hindi and Urdu Poets (CHUP) at Christ University, Bangalore organised the annual Sham-e-Gazal night on 25th February 2025 in the main auditorium, Central Campus. One by one, poets took the stage—some sang, others recited—bringing their verses to life. Urdu and Hindi, often unjustly viewed as symbols of religious division, intertwined effortlessly in the voices of the performers, creating a shared space of artistic expression. The words of Allama Iqbal came to mind:  "Kaahil baste rahe, Hindustan banta raha" (The idle kept settling, and Hindustan kept being built).  Poet Raghupati Sahay, popularly known to the world of poetry as Firaq Gorakhpuri imbibed the spirit of Hindustan. He was an English professor, who wrote mostly in Urdu and in Hindi. Throughout his life, he tried to dispel the notion that a language is linked to one religion but belongs to anyone who learnt and spoke the language. Yet, the legacy of Partition has fueled the mistaken belief that Urdu belo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Israel-Palestinaian Conflict

 The media very extensively showed us the atrocities committed by Hamas on Israeli citizens inside Israel on 7 October 2023. The next few days the media and I mean mostly the Western media CNN and BBC in particular, had only the story from the Israeli side and justifibily so. This narrative of being the victim was then used by Israel to launch an air-based retaliation into Gaza. So far 10,500 people have died most of them civilians in the so-called targeted bombardment of Gaza by IDF. The Western countries that took very little time to come to the support and aid of Israel are slow in condemning and pressurising Israel to stop the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza. Israel has never differentiated between the militant Palestinians and civilians when it retaliates. We have history to recall- the massacre of innocent Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel. Israel was never brought to justice for the war crimes as the US vetoed any attempt ...
Post a Comment
Read more