In response to reports today, that the President of India has rejected 3 mercy petitions, taking his tally of rejected mercy petitions to 37 (details can be accessed here), we, at FII, would like to issue a statement condemning the continued use of capital punishment in India.
While FII has great respect for the Indian Judicial System and the authority of the Hon’ble President of India, and would not wish to go into the merits of a particular case, we strongly feel that it is time to do away with the death penalty, which has been described by Amnesty International, after an analysis of 700 Supreme Court judgments, as a ‘lethal lottery’. Studies into the socio-economic profile of death-row inmates have shown that a disproportionate section of them come from economically vulnerable, lower caste, or religious minority families. The inherent arbitrariness and unfairness in the administration regarding the death penalty, makes the abolition of it a feminist issue, and FII calls for keeping these conversations alive.
In addition to this, FII believes that the ultimate purpose of punishments should be rehabilitative and not retributive. The irreversible nature of this punishment obviates any possibility of rehabilitation. The State-sanctioned killing of persons is not compatible with the creation of a compassionate society. It is for these reasons that FII expresses solidarity with organizations that oppose the death penalty and calls for the abolition of the capital punishment.
Whoever wishes to endorse the statement, please do so in the Comments section below.
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I support this. A common trend esp after Nirbhaya was #HangTheRapist. While yes, I too think heinous criminals don’t really deserve mercy, we must admit that the public’s behaviour is going too far. They say that those even SUSPECTED of committing crime should be hanged or lynched. That’s too much.
Anyone accused of anything, no matter how heinous, should be given a fair trial just to be sure that they are really the culprits.
The whole idea of jailing criminals should be to rehabilitate them and ensure they don’t commit crime again. Some say, even though an innocent person is executed or lynched, at least it will instill fear in future criminals. That is a complete farce.
Countries with low crime rates are not those like Saudi Arabia, Qatar or UAE but those like France, Germany and Switzerland. These countries’ govts have succeeded in keeping citizens happy and giving them no reasons to commit crime in the first place. That is the key to reducing crime. Countries with more humane punishments happen to have lower crime rates.
I hope like other campaigns of yours, this campaign too gets the success and recognition it deserves.