The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Plea for abolishing capital punishment

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Sunday, Nov 05, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Plea for abolishing capital punishment

Special Correspondent

It goes against human rights, say speakers

ARGUING FOR A CAUSE: (From left to right, seated): Poet Kanimozhi, former judge of the Mumbai High Court H. Suresh and journalist Kuldip Nayar at a public meeting organised by the Campaign Against Death Penalty in Chennai on Saturday. Manoharan Raja durai, convener of the campaign, is also in the picture. — PHOTO: M. VEDHAN

CHENNAI: The Government should bring an ordinance to abolish capital punishment and steps should be taken to commute Mohammed Afzal Guru's death sentence to life imprisonment, speakers at a public meeting organised by Campaign Against Death Penalty said on Saturday.

Divisionist forces were trying to communalise the debate over the death sentence awarded to Afzal in the Parliament attack case and this would harm the interests of the country, Kuldip Nayar, eminent journalist and former Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, said at the meeting that sought clemency for Afzal. The State did not have the right to award death sentence, and India should follow the countries such as the United Kingdom that have abolished capital punishment. The issue was not one of pardoning the guilty, who could be appropriately punished by increasing the life sentence to 20 or even 30 years.

People should unite against capital punishment and legislation for abolishing it should be brought in the next session of Parliament, Mr. Nayar said.

"Subjective"

Death penalty, by itself, was not a proper punishment as, in many instances, it had been found later that a death penalty victim was actually innocent, said H. Suresh, former judge, Mumbai High Court. In many instances, courts had rendered justice in a subjective manner. Capital punishment went against human rights and international statutes, he added.

The death sentence awarded to Afzal had to be seen in the context of distorted versions of what constituted nationalism. Such versions were being used by vested interests to suppress the rights of minority communities, poet Kanimozhi said. Without bringing in social and economic changes, the award of capital punishment was by itself questionable.

Writers V. Geetha and Thiagu and Manoharan Rajadurai, convenor of the campaign, also spoke.

Earlier, Mr. Nayar told reporters that those found guilty by the courts of serious crimes could be punished, but not by death. Efforts to communalise the Afzal case should be resisted.

It was regretful that the National Human Rights Commission had not taken a stand on the case, Mr. Suresh said.

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