“The pathological joy among the people and bystanders in anticipation of an imminent execution is a key to the continuation of the death rap in a collectively uncivilised world,” said French existentialist Albert Camus, in ‘Reflections on the Guillotine’. What the great existentialist wrote decades ago is happening exactly with the same gusto in India as the whole nation is eagerly awaiting the imminent executions of four convicts in Nirbhaya rape and murder case that took place on a wintry night in December 2012. Is not this morbid enthusiasm regarding the judicial elimination of four people a macabre sign of the ghastly times we are living in? Very recently, the whole nation rejoiced in the extrajudicial killings of four rapists by Hyderabad police and now the whole country is gloating over the sealed fate of Nirbhaya’s killers. Does capital punishment have a place in a civilised society? Is death rap a deterrent to heinous crimes? Th...
Striving for a World without Capital Punishment