Annie Zaidi: Truth, justice, killings

Reports say that Pakistan’s deputy attorney general intends to clean shoes at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, as a sort of penance for the beheading of a Sikh in Peshawar two years ago. Apparently, he’d already done some shoe-service at a gurudwara in Delhi.

My first reaction was bewilderment. Why is he doing penance? Was it not the Taliban who were at fault? Or is he just sorry that he allowed it to happen, or that he is part of a system that allows the Taliban to exist? He’s been quoted as saying that he wants to tell everyone that he’s a Khan, from Pakistan, but he’s not a terrorist.

As a gesture of peace, I suppose there is some merit to his act. But if we’re talking penance, then cleaning shoes doesn’t quite compensate for the beheading of an innocent man. What the deputy attorney general should focus on is catching the Talibani culprits and… and?

And what?

I don’t suppose it would be right to behead them. I cannot accept that, as a society, we should stand around and encourage the taking of human life. But then, what is the right thing to do?

I’ve spend days trying to wrap my head around punitive justice and I can’t seem to decide — what is the proper measure for blood? If it’s wrong for one man to kill, it is just as wrong for the rest of us to kill that man as vengeance. Because then, we too deserve to be killed in turn.

Even if I accept that the measure of blood is blood, there’s the horrific risk of someone innocent getting killed through the law. The courts seek what can be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Most crimes cannot be proved or disproved so easily. And even if everybody involved was honest, there is some room for error. Witness testimonies have been known to be faulty. Even forensics cannot be trusted hundred percent.

Besides, there is fact and there is truth. A child might have killed another child. That might be a fact. But the truth is that most children don’t fully understand the concept of life and death, and the consequences of injury. Even if we set out with murder in our hearts, how many of us know for sure how hard we are capable of hitting someone, and how much damage that will cause? Does someone really deserve to die — to be hung or electrocuted — in exchange for a miscalculation?

We can argue that the death penalty is awarded only in rare cases, where the killing is planned and/or especially brutal. But when we are talking about ‘terror’, does it make sense to delink the accused from their ideological brainwashing, for which responsibility rests with those who run religious fundamentalist organisations?

When Rajaona killed the former chief minister of Punjab Beant Singh, he was affiliated with the Babbar Khalsa. He’s alive because the government has stayed the execution. And perhaps some of us think he deserves to die. But what will really be accomplished by executing the man who committed the crime 17 years ago?

On the other hand, there is the option of life imprisonment. But once someone is convicted to a long prison sentence, how far do we push the punitive button? Do we make him suffer? Or do we just forget about vengeance and focus on turning jails into correctional facilities?

Hundreds of millions Indian citizens don’t have what the average Tihar jail inmate has: food, shelter, education, the right to work. If that’s what prison should offer, surely, that’s the least a non-prison should offer too?