HANGING

As I watched the blanket coverage of the Qasab sentencing, glued to the TV set since morning, I was reminded of an early morning scene outside Kolkata’s Central Correctional Home or, to be precise, Alipore Central Jail. About six years back, hundreds of journalists accompanied by hundreds more curious onlookers had gathered outside the jail overnight to hear the news: Dhananjoy has been hanged. Dhanajoy Chatterjee who was sentenced to death after being convicted of rape and killing of a young girl, Hetal Parekh, created much uproar in the civil society if capital punishment should be banned in India. As I interacted with many of Hetal's  neighbours, friends, classmates and teachers goning deep into the old case as the nation was preparing to hang him, I had a feeling at that time, like many others, that he SHOULD be hanged to death.

But I was shocked at my own strange emotional outburst on that fateful day in that early morning. We all knew Dhananjoy was hanged at around 4 o’clock. I was among those who waited on the western side of the road for Dhananjoy’s body to be taken out of the prison  At around 7 am, a mortuary van came out of the jail; I prepared to do my stand up. As the van carrying the corpse covered in a glass chamber passed by me, I could see only Dhananjoy's bare feet while the rest of the body was covered in a white sheet of cloth; I didn’t know what happened to my journalistic objectivity at that moment! I cried out on camera saying ‘this was the person who spent over 14 years inside the jail for committing a crime, rather killing a young girl, and today that very person is coming out of the confinement one last time, but not alive. His dead body is being taken out in full public glare’. It appeared to me, at that moment, the State here acted as a killer. With my emotion overflowing (later my cameraperson told me I was shivering while doing the walk about keeping Dhananjoy’s body at the background) I felt the capital punishment should be abolished. The State can not be a killer.

Today as I watched the Qasab coverage with my colleagues who like many others on and off air, were strongly advocating for a death sentence for the Pakistani terrorist, I was really confused to take a strong stand either for or against capital punishment. From the tones of the callers as well as the guests on live national television, it seemed as if crores of Indians are thrusting their anger on a terrorist to kill him and taste blood.

There were many arguments, apart from the legal ones, flying in the air heavily loaded with hate, anger and grudge. I could not deny the sentiment of a father of a deceased NSG soldier, Capt Unnikrishnan, who termed the death sentence as a symbolic one. He wanted something harsher than this, if the law provided. After all he lost his son. Mr Unnikrishnan probably echoed the desire of the kins of those 160 odd who were murdered in Mumbai’s most horrific terror attack better known as 26/11. If any caller talked against the death sentence, everybody supporting the punishment jumped on to their feet to stop and abuse that person, known or unknown with a lot of hatred. They said, “If it would have been your daughter, son, brother, sister or your parents, you would also want to kill the killer.” Perhaps they were true.

The question that disturbed me was if it was an occasion to celebrate as we saw pictures of fire crackers and jubilant people on the street, on live television after the quantum of punishment was declared. Yes we had to punish the man who came with a mission of mass killing. We could get hold of the only living terrorist and we needed to show the world we could bring justice to the victims of terrorist act and at the same time we could be strict when it came to any terrorist. We did. We were.

The question still remains in my mind. Where will this death punishment take us to? Our leaders will play a game of dialogue with  Pakistan from where these terrorists including Qasab had come well nurtured. The main conspirators of 26/11 will move freely in a rouge country called Pakistan, they say have fallen prey to terrorism or Talibanism. Many more terrorists will be produced to take on the civilized society on a wrong mission of jihad.

And most importantly, this death sentence and the public frenzy over it will boost up the ‘killer’ instinct among the people. I believe 99 per cent of those who were vociferous in supporting the death punishment, did so with a subdued ‘animal’ instinct.

I shall still submit that I had been and am utterly perplexed to take a strong stand over capital punishment today. My emotion suggests let the law take its course and legally punish Qasab as he deserves. Let it be the capital punishment, but let’s not celebrate the death sentence. Let us be more sensible citizens who would be more alert in our public life and help the administration in taking pre-emptive action to resist any such repeat of 26/11. We should demand that our politicians don’t just play around the rhetoric but take up the matter with our neighbours to bring the real culprits to book, make our intelligence agencies stronger, raise our police force in a manner capable of fighting the modern-day terrorists.

To me, we will pay our tribute to the souls of hundreds of martyrs who had to sacrifice their lives in terrorist act, by preventing any further terrorist activities on our soil.

People like Qasab had come here to die and he will be hanged to death. The terrorists would celebrate their hero’s jannat yatra. Let us not celebrate this fact please. Otherwise it will remain mere ‘symbolic’ on the face of the threat called terrorism.