Feb. 24
ENGLAND:
Why write about Ruth Ellis? The inspiration behind a new play about the last
woman to be hanged in Britain
"Why write about Ruth Ellis?" It's a question I've been asked many times in the
run-up to The Thrill of Love and it's a good one. I'd like to know the answer,
too.
3 years ago, I was commissioned by the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme
to write a play which I suspect is some 30 years in the making. I can trace its
beginnings to the mid-80s, when I was 17 years old and on high-alert for the
kind of gritty icons who graced the singles covers of The Smiths. I discovered
Ruth Ellis at the cinema, played so vividly by Miranda Richardson in Dance with
a Stranger. The film cast a powerful spell, not least because of the screenplay
by Shelagh Delaney, whom I already loved for A Taste of Honey. Delaney wrote in
a way that no other playwright I knew. Her characters gave a spark to my own
ambitions. It was a few years before I wrote a play of my own but a fuse had
been lit.
The play seeks to understand more about a complex, enigmatic young woman
Yet Ruth Ellis is no fictional character. She was flesh-and-blood real and her
story is true. The bare facts are as follows. A 28-year-old model, nightclub
hostess and mother-of-two, she was executed in July 1955 for the murder of her
lover, David Blakely. Ruth pleaded not guilty but offered little defence. She
was tried and sentenced in a day-and-a-half. Three months after the night of
the crime, she was dead. The public outcry was a key factor in the abolition of
the death penalty. Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be hanged in Britain and
her death was seen as a shocking example of "the medieval savagery of the law".
Ruth also lived on in popular culture. A year after her death, Diana Dors was
strongly influenced by her story in Yield to the Night, a film with close
similarities to her crime and punishment. Ruth still appears in the tabloids
when, every few years, yet more "unseen photos" are unearthed. A Fine Day for a
Hanging by Carol Anne Lee, published last year, is the latest and best Ruth
Ellis biography. A British "blonde bombshell", her reckless life continues to
fascinate, as does her lack of remorse. "It's obvious when I shot him, I
intended to kill him," Ruth tersely told the prosecuting QC. "No further
questions," he replied. But of course, there are.
Ruth had already left a violent marriage when she met Blakely. His own violence
was raised in court but not in the way we'd discuss it today. "He only hit me
with his hands and his fists but I bruise very easily," said Ruth, revealing so
much about her sense of self-worth. Neither she nor Blakely were faithful and
her motive for murder was seen as sexual jealousy. With the benefit of 60
years' hindsight, that looks very much like the symptom and not the disease.
The record (and the play) shows Ruth had suffered at the hands of people never
brought to justice. In 1955, domestic violence and sexual exploitation had
barely been named.
There's no doubt Ruth Ellis committed a terrible crime. She never denied that
herself. She shot Blakely outside of a pub at point-blank range. 4 bullets went
into his body, a 5th bounced off the pavement, hitting a passer-by in the hand,
which didn't help her defence. The 6th, she may have meant for herself but as
Blakely lay dying, she passed the gun to an off-duty policeman who found
himself first on the scene. She didn't resist her arrest or her fate. Many
thousands of voices called for a reprieve but not hers.
Researching The Thrill of Love took me to the case-files in the National
Archives but the emotional truth was more elusive. Official documents reveal
more about the authors than the subject, with her psychiatric reports
particularly distressing to read given what we now know about mental health. In
reference to her crime, 1 doctor concludes "an emotionally mature woman would
have been prevented from this action by thoughts of her children". Why write
about Ruth Ellis? That judgement seems reason enough.
Ruth Ellis has become a symbol of criminal injustice but in The Thrill of Love
she is neither victim, villain or hero. The play seeks to understand more about
a complex, enigmatic young woman and the life she lived. With Blakely an
off-stage character, the story focuses on Ruth and her fellow hostesses. They
would have known her better than anyone yet they are all but silent in the
official records. By finding their voice, I felt we may hear Ruth's, too.
Exactly what drove her out with a gun on Easter Sunday 1955 can never fully be
known but we still have much to learn from the question.
--The Thrill of Love at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme until 9
March, the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough 13-23 February and St James
Theatre, London 27 March-4 May
(source: Amanda Whittington, theartsdesk.com)
BANGLADESH:
Bangladesh students rally over war crimes trials
Thousands of students rallied in Bangladesh's capital on Saturday demanding
death to Islamic political party leaders who are on trial for alleged war
crimes during the country's 1971 independence war.
8 top leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamic party, are
being tried on charges of mass killings, rapes and arson allegedly committed
during Bangladesh's 9-month war of separation from Pakistan.
Earlier this month, a tribunal convicted party leader Abdul Quader Mollah of
mass killings during the war and sentenced him to life in prison, a sentence
that many Bangladeshis considered lenient.
On Saturday, about 5,000 students shouted "Death to the killers" as they
rallied in Dhaka.
The government says it will appeal Mollah's sentence before the Supreme Court
this coming week, asking for the death penalty for the 65-year-old.
Saturday's protest came a day after activists from Jamaat and an alliance of 12
other Islamic parties clashed with police across the country, leaving 4 people
dead and around 200 injured, including about a dozen journalists.
After Friday's violence, the Islamic party alliance called a nationwide general
strike for Sunday, accusing the police of foiling their protests and alleging
that the government is planning to ban religion-based political parties. The
government denies that religion-based parties will be banned.
The main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by former
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, said it would back Sunday's strike.
Sunday is a working day in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where strikes are common
opposition tactics to highlight demands.
(source: Associated Press)
INDIA:
India's secret executions raise concerns
For 11 years the family of a convicted terrorist waited and wondered about his
fate as he sat on death row. 2 weeks ago they found out - from television.
Mohammad Afzal Guru had been hanged in secrecy in a faraway jail in New Delhi.
A government letter informing them of the imminent hanging arrived at their
home in Kashmir two days after he was dead.
"No words can describe the pain. It was like a bolt from the sky. Our whole
family is still locked in that moment. We're still struggling to reconcile with
that moment," said Yasin Guru, the dead man's cousin.
India has hanged 2 men in the past three months, its 1st executions in 8 years.
In a departure from past practice, both were done in secrecy. Rights activists
worry the government has set a precedent that could impact the nearly 500
people on death row in India, including four men whose mercy pleas...their last
hope of life...were rejected by India's president last week.
"The new practice of executing in secret without prior notification to
relatives is deeply worrying," said G. Ananthapadmanabhan, who heads the India
chapter of Amnesty International.
3 months earlier, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman of a 2008
terror attack in Mumbai, was hanged in equal secrecy. His execution was
announced several hours later.
Many believe that the government wanted to avoid violent protests in Kashmir -
where a separatist campaign has just begun to wane - that would have erupted
had Guru's hanging been announced beforehand.
But that's no consolation to his family or relevant to human rights activists
and lawyers who see the 2 secret hangings as an assault on the values of
democratic India.
Guru was convicted in the 2001 attack on India's Parliament that killed 14
people when 5 heavily armed gunmen entered the high-security parliament complex
and opened fire. 8 police personnel were killed before the 5 attackers were
shot and killed. A gardener also died.
Guru's wife, 13-year-old son and other family members were stunned when they
heard on television news that he had been executed, said Yasin Guru, the
cousin. Convicts facing imminent execution are normally allowed a last meeting
with their families.
"The world's biggest democracy did not even have the courtesy to inform us," he
said, adding the family was now demanding that the government hand over his
body, which has been buried in Tihar jail in New Delhi, where he was executed
Feb. 9.
The government says it sent a letter, dated Feb. 6, informing Guru's family of
the execution. But it was mailed Feb. 8, 1 day before his execution and reached
his family in Sopore in Kashmir on Feb. 11, two days after Guru was hanged.
"The most distressing failure of official compassion and public decency was in
denying Afzal Guru's wife and teenage son the chance to meet him for the last
time before his execution," activist Harsh Mander wrote in the Hindustan Times
newspaper.
T.R. Andhyarujina, a former solicitor general of India, called Guru's execution
"an inhumane act" that serves as "the most callous death sentence carried out
by the government of India."
Kasab, the convict in the Mumbai terror attack, was a Pakistani. India said it
informed Pakistan about the imminent execution and asked Islamabad to inform
his family. Kasab's family did not claim his body.
There was little outcry over his execution, partly because of the deep
revulsion that his actions evoked in India. The 2 1/2 day attack by Kasab and
his comrades in November 2008 left 166 people dead and is seared in the memory
of most Indians. Because Kasab was a foreigner with no local ties, family or
support, his execution did not cause the same kind of blowback that Guru's did.
Most of that anger was evident in Kashmir which erupted into violence after the
news of Guru's hanging came out. Many Kashmiris also believe that he did not
receive a fair trial.
Even Kashmir's chief minister, Omar Abdullah, an ally of the Indian government,
said it was unacceptable that the family was not told of the execution and
allowed to say goodbye.
"If we are going to inform someone by post that his family member is going to
be hanged, there is something seriously wrong with the system," he said.
The secrecy goes against the humanitarian values the Indian state professes to
uphold, said Rebecca John, a Supreme Court lawyer.
"The fact that the family was not informed, it reflects not only a weak state,
but a brutal state; a state that does not believe in basic human rights," she
said.
The use of the death penalty, on the books since 1860, has been unheard of
recently. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that it should be given only in the
"rarest of rare" cases. The executions of Kasab and Guru were the 1st time in 8
years India had put anyone to death.
According to the government, 476 people were on death row in 2012. With most
appealing for clemency through India's slow-moving judicial system, few will
likely end up facing execution.
Rights activists point to the irrevocable nature of the death penalty and the
rise in cases where DNA evidence has overturned convictions. They fear
executions shrouded in secrecy deprive defendants of any last-minute legal
recourse.
Attention is now focused on the 4 men on death row in the southern Indian state
of Tamil Nadu whose mercy pleas were rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee
last week, 9 years after they filed them.
They were convicted in 1993 of involvement in a land mine blast that killed 22
people, including several police, who were on their way to arrest a notorious
smuggler.
On Wednesday, they earned a short reprieve when the Supreme Court gave them 6
weeks to pursue a last bid for clemency.
Another case is that of Balwant Singh Rajoana, convicted in the 1995 killing of
a former chief minister of India's Punjab state. Last year, the present chief
minister, Prakash Singh Badal, took the lead in getting Rajoana's execution
postponed while he filed another appeal in the Supreme Court.
Political experts say that Guru was hanged within days of Mukherjee turning
down his clemency plea, which is unusual in India. They feel it was done with
an eye on upcoming general elections expected next year.
The quick and quiet executions will allow the government to claim it is being
tough on terror, without angering any major constituency, and perhaps winning
accolades from the majority Hindus.
"This secret hanging is a clear message to Kashmiris that Indian laws are only
meant to protect the state and its officials," said Khurram Parvez, a Kashmiri
human rights activist.
(source: Associated Press)
*************************
No terminal benefits
Should the death penalty be abolished? My answer is a clear and unequivocal
yes. I come to that conclusion both in terms of practical concerns as well as
moral principles. Today, I want to share my thinking with you.
The 1st practical concern is: are there any grounds for claiming the death
penalty is an effective deterrent? Janet Reno, a former US Attorney General,
has said: "I have inquired for most of my adult life about studies that might
show that the death penalty is a deterrent and I have not seen any research
that would substantiate that point." And America is a country where over 1,000
have been executed in the last 40 years!
The Canadian experience is more convincing. According to Amnesty, the murder
rate dropped 27% after the death penalty was abolished in 1976.
A 2nd practical concern is that after the death penalty is implemented if you
have reason to review the verdict of guilt it's based upon it is too late. Even
if this only occurs occasionally the execution of one innocent person is
sufficient to seriously undermine the death penalty.
Now examine our specific experience in India. In July 2012, 14 retired Supreme
Court and high court judges called on the President to commute 13 death
sentences because, in their opinion, they were wrongly upheld by the Supreme
Court either out of error or ignorance.
Then, in November 2012, the Supreme Court itself found that the rarest of rare
standard was not applied uniformly and, therefore, the basis of the death
penalty needed to be looked at again.
What does that tell us? Quite simply that judges themselves, both serving and
retired, have serious concerns about the way the death penalty is awarded.
Suhas Chakma of the Asian Centre for Human Rights offers good reason for this.
Relying on statistics compiled by the National Crimes Records Bureau, he's
found that over the last decade the death penalty has, on average, been awarded
once every 3 days!
Even if the facts of its execution sharply differ this statistic is deeply
worrying. It suggests - no, proves - that at the lower levels of our judiciary
the death penalty is treated like a common everyday punishment.
However, the most telling argument against the death penalty arises out of
moral principle. It, therefore, takes precedence over all the practical
concerns we have so far discussed, no matter how serious.
Put simply, the moral issue is do we have a right to take human life? Given
that we cannot confer life should we seek to terminate it?
I believe it's on this simple but critical ground that 140 countries have
either abolished the death penalty or given up using it.
They believe the judicial system must hand out justice, not play at being God.
India is one of just 21 countries which seems to disagree.
Let me make 1 more point: abolishing the death penalty does not mean abolishing
severe punishment for the rarest of the rare cases.
As Fali Nariman told me last week, life imprisonment for the full duration of a
convict's life, without any possibility of clemency or parole, is not just an
adequate alternative but also a horrible punishment. Arguably, it's more
difficult to bear than swift and painless execution.
If Afzal Guru or Kasab had been thus punished they would have spent decades -
possibly over 50 years in Kasab's case - in jail. Do you really believe the
death penalty is more stringent punishment? .
(source: Opinion, Karan Thapar, Hindustan Times)
**************************
Constitutionally incorrect to hang the three, says judge who confirmed death
for Rajiv killers
It would be 'constitutionally incorrect' now to hang the three people sentenced
to death in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, said Justice K T Thomas, who
headed the Supreme Court bench that confirmed the death sentences. "It was my
misfortune to have presided over that bench," he told TOI.
More than 13 years ago, it was a 3-judge bench headed by Justice Thomas that
confirmed death sentence for Nalini Sriharan, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan.
Nalini's death penalty was commuted to imprisonment for life by Tamil Nadu
governor in April 2000 on the basis of a recommendation of the state cabinet
and a public appeal by Sonia Gandhi. The TADA had originally awarded death
sentence to all the 26 accused persons. When the matter reached the Supreme
Court, which was the only appellate forum under theRajiv Gan as a referred
trial, capital punishment was confirmed only for 4.
In an interview, Justice Thomas said the judgment itself had 'errors' as the
death sentences had not considered the antecedents, nature and character of the
accused. Hence any decision to hang the three could now be termed as
'constitutionally incorrect' and a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution,
he told TOI. Going a step further, the judge said case deserved a review,
considering the antecedents and character of Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan.
"At a time when the Supreme Court bench headed by me pronounced judgments in
Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, apparently, we did not consider the nature and
character of the accused who were sentenced to death penalty by us. It was only
many years thereafter a bench headed by Justice S B Sinha pointed out that
without considering the nature and character of accused, a death sentence
should never be awarded. His judgments mentioned errors in previous SC
judgments and that applies to Rajiv Gandhi assassination case," he said.
Also, he pointed out the 3 have been in prison for 22 years. "For any life
imprisonment, every prisoner is entitled to have a right to get his case
reviewed by the jail authorities (to determine) whether remission can be
announced or not. Since the accused in Rajiv Gandhi case were death convicts,
they underwent a long period of imprisonment without even having the benefit of
life imprisonment," he said. "This appears to be a 3rd type of sentence,
something which is unheard and constitutionally incorrect. If they are hanged
today or tomorrow, they will be subjected to 2 penalties for one offense."
In 1999, Justice Thomas had agreed with two others on the bench in respect of
death penalty for only Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan. As for Murugan's wife
Nalini, he gave a dissenting, but minority, verdict preferring imprisonment for
life.
When TOI contacted Justice V R Krishna Iyer, former judge of the Supreme Court,
he said death penalty could not be considered as a punishment. "It is just
another act of murder, a judicial murder, by the state. It is high time for
India to abolish death penalty and India has not gained anything from death
penalties in the past," he said.
The 3 death convicts have completed almost 22 years of imprisonment. Their
execution, which was scheduled to be held on September 9, 2011, was stayed by
the Madras high court for 6 weeks in August that year. The case has since been
transferred to the Supreme Court, to be decided after the Devinder Pal Singh
Bhullar case verdict is delivered.
(source: The Times of India)
***************************************
A master planner and master blaster cut short 22 lives
Palar landmine blast is considered the deadliest strike by sandalwood smuggler
and forest brigand Veerappan's gang, in police records, for claiming 22 lives
and injuring 30 others.
After 21 years of the barbaric act, it's in the news again as 4 of the bandit's
aides accused in the case - Simon, Gnanaprakasham, Meesekar Madaiah
and?Bilavendran - have moved the Supreme Court to commute their death sentence
to life imprisonment.
The blast, masterminded by Veerappan, is an intriguing story. It all started
with Veerappan daring the police to 'catch me if you can', after laying a death
trap. On April 8, 1993, amid the hustle and bustle of a shandy at Kolathur near
Mettur in Tamil Nadu, a poster in Tamil garners attention.
It was Veerappan inviting superintendent of police of the region, K
Gopalakrishnan, popular as 'Rambo'?Gopalakrishnan, to catch him saying, 'I will
be at Valanguli Patti tomorrow.?If you are really born to your... catch me...'.
It's not just that, what had incited?Rambo was?Veerappan's belligerent
language.
The following day, April 9, 1993, Rambo Gopalakrishnan led a police team,
besides local informers handpicked and nurtured by him and some forest
personnel, on a Veerappan hunt.?After reaching Palar bridge located between
Mettur and Male Mahadeshwara Hills, the jeep carrying Gopalakrishnan and men
develops a snag.
The Karnataka special task force deployed at the bridge, offer help to their TN
counterparts. They hand over 2 buses of Karnataka State Reserve Police (KSRP)
force. 1 bus carrying Gopalakrishnan, 15 informers, 4 police personnel and 2
forest watchers, all from Tamil Nadu, takes the lead. As an escort, another bus
carrying Inspector M Ashok Kumar (also from TN)-led full-fledged police team
follows.
Valanguli Patti is 12 km from Palar bridge and the buses carrying
Gopalakrishnan and others had traversed around 4 km, when the vehicle in front
explodes near Sorekai Madu. The time is around 12 noon.
A police personnel preferring anonymity told Deccan Herald, the bus carrying
Ashok Kumar and police was still behind when the blast occurred. On reaching
the blast site, they had to wait for the wall of dust to settle before they
fired indiscriminately at the bushes and rocks.
Barring Gopalakrishnan, who survived the blast, the 22 men accompanying him
were torn apart, with their bodies lying in pieces on trees and rocks.
Gopalakrishnan, fully armed and standing on the footboard of his vehicle, was
violently thrown out and he fell into a nearby ditch with severe injuries on
his left leg, left hand and on his face.
The Police officer underwent 9 surgeries and could return to duty only after 1
1/2 years!
The explosive material was gelatine sticks used for blasting rocks by illegal
quarries in the region.
The sticks were stacked in 14 pits dug in equal number of days (1 pit a day),
nearly 4 to 5 feet deep and covered from the top. No sooner the bus carrying
Gopalakrishnan and others arrived at the spot, Simon (accused in the case)
triggers a dynamo-like device connected to the explosives through a wire drawn
from the hills, causing the explosion.
According to the records, Veerappan had clearly instructed Simon to execute the
blast only after the vehicle/s cross 10 pits, so that it will be a powerful
blast. However, Simon triggers the blast soon after the bus crosses the 1st
pit.
What had confused the master blaster, a former quarry worker whom Veerappan had
engaged, was the bandit's input that Gopalakrshnan and his men were coming in
smaller vehicles (may be jeeps). When Simon sighted a bus, flummoxed, he set
off the explosion. Simon too suffers injuries but bolts to safety.
The 4 "Veerappan gang" men, after the dust settled down that fateful day (who
were later convicted in this case), had actually come "looking for him to see
whether he was dead or alive" when Gopalakrishnan still lay writhing in pain in
the ditch. That was how, he later said, he could identify the faces of the 4
accused in the 'Trial Court' in Mysore, on the basis of which they were
convicted. The Supreme Court in its verdict also upheld Gopalakrishnan's
crucial testimony in this case as "reliable and trust worthy and that it can
safely be made the basis of conviction."
As per the documents cited in the Supreme Court judgment, of the 121 accused
persons in the Palar bridge blast case, 50 persons were subsequently arrested
and prosecuted. Of them, 4 were convicted.
Even Human rights activists now say that any commutation of the accused death
sentence could only be from a larger humanitarian perspective, as the death
penalty has been eschewed by many countries. The fact the 4 convicts have
already spent nearly 20 years in jail is also a factor to reckon with, add
human rights activists. The Supreme Court will now have the last word.
(With inputs from M R Venkatesh in Chennai.)
'Rambo' turns key to lock them in jail
A special court constituted to try Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA)
cases, was set up in Mysore (then undivided Mysore district with Chamarajanagar
a part of it) and the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee training centre
on Mysore-Hunsur road was converted into the court. The district and sessions
judge presided over the TADA court too.
The final verdict came on September 29, 2001 with Judge D Krishnappa awarding
life sentence to 4 accused in the Palar landmines blast case. The convicts
later approached Supreme Court (as High Court was not entitled to hear TADA
cases), which enhanced life sentence to death.
If not for Police officer Gopalakrishnan, a key witness who testified in the
case and identified the convicted, there were chances of their acquittal as in
other 3 cases - attack on Ramapura police station, Meenyam ambush that claimed
the life of SP T Harikrishna and SI Shakeel Ahmed, and another attack on SP
Gopal Hosur - due to lack of evidence.
(source: Deccan Herald)
**************************
We can sense injustice for people who got killed
Wonder how things alter overnight over here in Kashmir! You sleep down in a
seemingly peaceful ambience and wake up to see the desolate street outside. The
stray barking dogs, few men in uniform and a moving police vehicle warning
people to stay indoors - you rise to find your place under siege. This is no
dreadful dream. It can happen and it happens with us. Occasionally.
So, imagine how fragile our 'peace' is! Just a single event tips over the
situation in Kashmir. People are caged, media is gagged, info blocked. The
phony peace is shattered into pieces. Thousands of flanking tourists; mega
events and festivals; rock bands and solid banquets; tweeting rulers and flying
leaders: everything appears so flimsy. You just cannot help but sneer.
And then, all this vindicates the fact that Kashmir continues to be the boiling
pot whose lid gets opened as and when required by the stakeholders. Someone
from Kashmir, being convicted and hanged, is not just a plain incident. There
is a profiling of people, community and faith involved. The trail of history,
as such, is not supposed to be fair.
However, what pains is the way the course of law is turned into a political
act. Justice is linked up with politics of opportunism and pretense. The death
penalty of a convict from Kashmir is timed in a manner that sends a strong
appeal to the vote bank. More than 6 years after the Supreme Court verdict, the
man is hanged so clandestinely. Even the family of the accused is not given a
chance to have his last glimpse.
There ought to be a human face to justice. Justice can be blind but it can't be
brute. Some respect for human sensibility is to be guaranteed under
Humanitarian Law. State cannot rebuff mind-count and reflect upon only
head-count in its lexicon of justice. There is a need to mull over the very
basic notion of justice and re-visit what Amartya Sen termed as the "tyranny of
ideas" that actually shapes the delivery of justice.
When Saddam was executed, West upheld its own benchmark of defining terror and
disseminating the message of retribution across the world.
The operation of Bin Laden's extermination was again weighed on the
ideological, political and diplomatic fulcrum. Kasab's capital punishment too
had a concept of violent treatment to a violent perpetrator. In all these
cases, the balance of justice budged as per the state's understanding of its
internal and external domain. As the dynamics change, the perspectives and
responses on justice become situational.
As far Afzal Guru's hanging, people in Kashmir seem somewhat perplexed over the
sudden swiftness in executing capital punishment in India. Within 3 months of
Kasab's execution, another death sentence has been carried out. If the justice
is proclaimed to be balanced and unprejudiced, the same response ought to
emerge for the cases/situations where State has to be accountable and
conscientious. Of late, in the wake of brutal gang rape and murder in Delhi,
the state's response to the recommendations on AFSPA as put in by Justice Verma
Committee's report drew a flak. The silence over AFSPA review exposed the
state's record of its slippery trajectory of "selective justice" by denying the
right to legal redressal to victimized people of areas where AFSPA rules the
roost.
Apart from such contradictions, the execution of a Kashmiri native also reveals
the validity of intentions of the system for concretizing the real stability
over here. All such occurrences have proven to be the preamble of a simmering
discontent and growing alienation. Over and again. Unfortunately.
In Kashmir, the notion of justice has been ironically rendered too difficult
and vague to fit in any frame or discourse since we have seen only injustice.
Afzal Guru's execution has bolstered this feeling. Perhaps for us Charles
Dickens wrote, "In the little world in which children have their existence,
whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely
felt, as injustice".
We can sense injustice for so many people who got killed during the last 2
decades of conflict. We can touch injustice by seeing the killers going scot
free. We can experience injustice for no commission ever heard our stories
honestly. We can think of injustice by remembering those who died unsung and
were buried under oblivion. Justice has been scrapped from our lives as well as
lexicon.
(source: Opinion; Syeda Afshana teaches at Media Education Research Centre,
MERC, Kashmir University----Greater Kashmir)
*********************************
Death sentence for child killer, molester
In a landmark judgment after the Delhi gang rape incident, a Mysore court
sentenced a 21-year-old youth to death on Saturday for attempt to rape and
murder of a 3 1/2-year-old girl exactly 2 years after the incident in Yadahalli
of Mysore taluk.
Second Additional Sessions Judge N Rudramuni in his 62-page judgment also
sentenced Nanjappa, son of Shivananjappa of Yedahalli. to rigorous imprisonment
for 7 years and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000. In case of default of payment, he
shall further undergo simple imprisonment for 1 year, the judge said.
"This is nothing short of cold-blooded murder without provocation. Parents of
the victim lost a beautiful, loving child on account of the cruel act of the
accused. They deserve to be compensated. The Government of Karnataka shall pay
"1 lakh from the Victim Compensation Fund," Judge observed.
Nanjappa had lured the victim on the pretext of buying her snacks, attempted to
molest her and then killed her on February 24. "The pain and agony undergone by
the minor girl is beyond imagination. The accused bit her on her thigh,
irregular abrasions were found on her lips, cheeks and mouth," the Judge
observed.
Reacting to the judgment, Nanjappa said he was falsely implicated and would
file an appeal in the High Court.
Rarest of rare cases, argues Judge
Bestiality, antecedents, feigning innocence and the aggravating factors are the
main components in awarding death penalty to Nanjappa. The court came to the
conclusion that it is a rarest of rare case to award capital punishment.
Judge Rudramuni noted that Nanjappa was a person with sexual perversity. "He
used to satisfy his lust with commercial workers and when he had no money to
offer them, he had intercourse with animals. It proves that he is a person with
abnormality and has no chance of reformation. He is a menace to society," the
judge observed.
Killing an innocent and helpless child always warrants death sentence, the
judge said.
Photographs of the victim and the post-mortem report clearly demonstrates the
cruelty of the accused, the judge observed. Subsequent conduct of the accused,
going to the house of deceased, enquiring about her whereabouts and feigning
innocence is also indicative of the fact that he is not an ordinary criminal,
the judge added.
The judge also observed that during the course of trial the accused's behaviour
did not reflect any remorse or repentance.
Public Prosecutor HE Chinnappa contended that it was the most brutal, diabolic
and inhuman offence of rape and murder. "He attempted forcible sexual
intercourse on her and bit her on the thigh, tore her undergarment with a
blade, caused bleeding around her genitals. When she resisted, he smothered her
and bludgeoned her to death causing a fracture of the skull," he added.
(source: New Indian Express)
**************************************
Sit on mercy pleas, let the killers off
One wonders if our Presidents and Governments are at all concerned with
promoting the cause of justice, because they are often engaged in doing just
the things which are designed to subvert that very cause. For instance, all of
them know that an inordinate delay in settling the mercy plea of a convict who
has been sentenced to death can result in the convict getting away with a
life-term.
And yet, they take ages to decide on such petitions, providing the death row
prisoner with an escape route of approaching the Supreme Court for a
reconsideration of the capital punishment on grounds of delay in execution of
the sentence. They just cannot, or do not want to, make up their mind in a
reasonable period of time on whether the convict's death sentence should be
commuted to life-term or whether he should be marched to the gallows. The delay
in making that decision is not limited to a few months or even a couple of
years. It takes many years and even a decade or more for the Head of our state
and our elected regime to conclude either way. What is the rationale behind
such lengthy bouts of indecisiveness? Either the rationale does not exist or it
has not been adequately explained to the people.
It's not just that our decision-makers are promoting injustice through such
delays. It's also that such injustice hits both the convicted person and the
families of the victim. For instance, if a man sentenced to death for a 'rarest
of rare' crime is hanged after spending 10 years in prison, he would have
effectively served two punishments for the same crime: 10 years in jail and
hanging. Besides, he spends a decade agonising over when, if at all, he will be
hanged. That's certainly not a fair deal - even for a person who has committed
a deed that fetched him death. The delay in taking a decision by the President
and the Government of the day is also a mockery of justice for those people who
have lost their dear ones at the hands of the killer. They expect prompt
justice, but get justice from the courts after many years of waiting and
fighting a legal and psychological battle; and then they see the killer spend
his time in jail at the expense of the tax-payers when he should have been
hanged at the earliest.
These and other issues are being debated for long now, but they have recently
come into the limelight after four aides of notorious sandalwood smuggler
Veerappan managed to get their hanging stayed by the apex court on the pretext
that, while they had been sentenced to death in 2004, the President rejected
their mercy petition after a long delay of nearly 8 years - in February this
year. At least, Pranab Mukherjee acted promptly, but the pitch had already been
queered by his predecessor Pratibha Patil who had sat over mercy pleas and
acted only towards the end of her tenure - in 2 instances commuting death to
life-term in case of convicts involved in the rape and murder of children!
Veerappan's aides would not have succeeded in getting a stay on their execution
if the President and the Government had acted promptly and rejected their mercy
pleas. And, had the Government and the then President showed the promptness
which was needed, the families of the 22 policemen who lost their lives at the
hands of these four criminals in 1993, would not been feeling cheated, as they
must be today.
But of course, this is not the only plea of remission of death sentence before
the courts; there are others, and 1 of them has been cited by the Supreme Court
Bench which has used it to stay the hanging of Veerappan's aides. The Bench
comprising the Chief Justice of India noted that another Bench of the apex
court had reserved a verdict in a writ petition of Devender Pal Singh Bhullar
and MN Das, whose mercy petitions had been pending before the President for
years. The Chief Justice of India observed that it would like to await the
Bench's verdict in that case before deciding the Veerappan aides' issue. Fair
enough, but the question is: Why is that Bench taking so long (verdict was
reserved in April 2012) in giving its ruling? Do the honourable judges not
realise that they too have to move as fast as they expect the Government and
the President to? Incidentally, Das's mercy plea was kept hanging in balance at
the President's office for as many as 12 years; he filed the plea in June 1999
and it was rejected in May 2011. Bhullar's case was no different; his plea for
commutation of capital punishment was held up with the President for 9 long
years.
Since the President acts on the aid and advice of the Government, the UPA
regime has to squarely take the blame for the mess that has come about, with
justice been made a mockery of - whether you consider it from the perspective
of the convict or the victim. The Government is aware of the various
observations of the courts that undue delays in the disposal of presidential
pleas for mercy will invite a judicial reconsideration of the death penalty.
For example, Justice (now retired) VR Krishna Iyer had spoken of the "brooding
horror haunting the prisoner in the condemned cell for years". Another Supreme
Court judge (also retired), Justice O Chinnappa Reddy, had even gone to the
extent of saying that a prolonged delay in the execution of a death sentence
had a 'de-humansing' impact on the convict and that the delay offended his
Fundamental Rights under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The Government and the President know that the apex court, in a bid to settle
the issue of inordinate delays in deciding on mercy pleas one way or the other,
had in 1989 reiterated that a lengthy delay in executions would be unjust,
unfair and unreasonable. The court had also held that in case of an inordinate
delay in execution, the condemned prisoner would be entitled to move the court
to seek if it was fair to allow the sentence of death to be executed. That is
what we are seeing now in a spate of petitions before the apex court.
We need a law that lays down a time-frame for the President to decide on mercy
petitions. This is all the more necessary because the number of cases of people
being given capital punishment seems to be getting significant. Quoting
statistics of the National Crimes Records Bureau, the Asian Centre for Human
Rights has said that a total of 1,455 persons were given the death penalty
between 2001 and 2011. Of course, not all of these will have been upheld by the
apex court or will have reached the President. Meanwhile, the organisation's
contention that the 'rarest of rare case' doctrine has "become routine" is
erroneous. Fact is: The 'rarest of rare' crimes are becoming more of a routine,
thanks to a changing social profile and the lax implementation of laws.
(source: Rajesh Singh, The Pioneer)
*********************
Delhi HC commutes death penalty of man who killed father
The death sentence of a man, who had killed his father as sacrifice to a deity
in 2008, has been reduced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court.
Dismissing Jitender's plea, a bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Pratibha
Rani said before awarding death penalty the trial court should have considered
the circumstances forcing him to hack his own father.
The bench, however, upheld the trial court's conviction order against him while
converting the death penalty to life imprisonment.
"He (Jitender) cannot be termed as an irredeemable murderer who is beyond the
pale of reformation. Consequently, the court does not confirm the sentence of
death imposed upon him. It (court), however substitutes it (death) with life
imprisonment. The conviction is however, affirmed." After examining the
prosecution evidence, the bench referred to several Supreme Court judgements on
human sacrifice.
It said, "The deposition of witnesses also suggests that the deceased himself
was a sewadar in the temple. These facts establish that the accused was a
strong believer in Goddess Devi...
"Apart from facts, the evidence on record also points to gory details, such as
mutilation of the body, after the beheading of the deceased, and the accused
placing the severed head in the temple...These surrounding circumstances, in
the opinion of the court conclusively prove that the accused had indulged in
ritual, human sacrifice of his father," the bench also said.
The trial court in January last year had awarded death penalty to Jitender for
the "brutal" killing of his father.
(source: Business Standard)
IRAN:
Afghans protest executions of their countrymen in Iran Afghans protest
executions of their countrymen in Iran
Tens of Afghan nationals have been hanged in Iran over the past 6 months.
Residents of north-eastern Takhar province of Afghanistan say they have buried
at least the bodies of 80 people in the last 6 months who have been executed in
Iran.
According to the local residents in Kalafgan in Takhtar province at last 700
Afghans have been arrested by Iranian regime security forces and around 350 of
the detainees are facing death penalties mostly on drug charges.
Another report says hundreds of people attended the funerals of 10 men in
Takhar Province on Saturday who were recently hanged in Iran.
Armature videos have been distributed online showing the burial of a number of
victims in Afghanistan while their family members mourn.
The mourners have marched in protest at the executions in Takhar province ,
calling on the Afghan government and the United Nations to stop the executions.
(source: National Council of Resistance of Iran)
_______________________________________________
DeathPenalty mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Search the Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A free service of WashLaw
http://washlaw.edu
(785)670.1088
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
