We like to believe that justice is served when a murderer goes to the gallows. Death offers closure. It also shields us from the awful truth that a society where such crimes happen with alarming regularity is broken, and requires a drastic overall. We experienced it as broken in 2012, when details of the Nirbhaya case emerged. The masses roared on the streets, demanding that something get fixed. The accused were arrested, and seven years later, have been executed.
Someone mentioned videos. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want any more detail about those men. Already, I find it hard to forget that they were desperate to stay alive, filing appeal after appeal. I confess, I don’t know what they deserved. Fourteen, twenty-five or fifty years does not seem to balance the scales of justice. But it is also true that I feel neither relief nor cheer. I feel weary, and much, much more afraid than I was in 2012.
The cases I’ve mentioned above are a tiny selection from English press reports. Some of those ‘rarest of rare’ crimes were undertaken after the accused in the Nirbhaya case were arrested, and people were baying for blood. A death sentence was almost a forgone conclusion. Yet, the rarest of rare crimes recurred. Individually, and in gangs, men emulated the tortures they heard of during media coverage of the Nirbhaya case. One thing different was though: they made sure to kill the victims.
Someone mentioned videos. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want any more detail about those men. Already, I find it hard to forget that they were desperate to stay alive, filing appeal after appeal. I confess, I don’t know what they deserved. Fourteen, twenty-five or fifty years does not seem to balance the scales of justice. But it is also true that I feel neither relief nor cheer. I feel weary, and much, much more afraid than I was in 2012.
The cases I’ve mentioned above are a tiny selection from English press reports. Some of those ‘rarest of rare’ crimes were undertaken after the accused in the Nirbhaya case were arrested, and people were baying for blood. A death sentence was almost a forgone conclusion. Yet, the rarest of rare crimes recurred. Individually, and in gangs, men emulated the tortures they heard of during media coverage of the Nirbhaya case. One thing different was though: they made sure to kill the victims.
Read the whole piece in Outlook magazine:
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