The print and digital media have lately been abuzz with news, views and debates on whether India has done itself any good by executing the 2001 parliament attack accused Afzal Guru, amid tell-tale secrecy and grotesque brusqueness. The execution of Ajmal Kasab in November 2012 has given the entire country just the right platform to plunge into an all-so-familiar quagmire of fiery discussions and heated debates, across the length and breadth of the society – with people chatting on the issue while sipping tea in the roadside tea stalls to sundry youth passing comments and sharing 'witticisms' on Facebook. The whole country has started taking morbid interest in one of the most sensitive issues that the Indian society faces today.

It is said that the lifeline of a vibrant democracy lies in the participation of the common man in its day-to-day functioning. This lifeline, however, has become quite an impediment for the Indian democracy at present. On one hand, we have the police beating up protesters for peacefully agitating against laxity in security of women and on the other hand we have the government of India conspiring and executing a couple of terrorists within three months, justifying the undue haste with the pretext of 'assuaging' the 'sentiments' of the 'common men' who were deeply hurt and humiliated by the actions of the two deceased convicts. The effect of common man's new-found urge to participate in the 'Indian democracy' has polarised opinions of seismic proportions in our country.  Was capital punishment really required? Isn't this hushed up execution of a so-called 'terrorist' a shameful smack on the face of the nation? Doesn't this reek of the ideals of Fascism of the past century? Here is what I make of it.

(1) Let’s face the dry technical statistics first up. More than a hundred nations are on their way to banning capital punishment. India, which has historically been the flag-bearer of 'peace' in the United Nations Organisation, is surprising clawing itself back to the days when capital punishment used to be a quotidian form of law enforcement. Since 1995 it has been used only four times, on Auto Shankar in 1995, Dhananjoy Chatterjee in 2004, Ajmal Kasab in 2012 and Afzal Guru in 2013. In the aftermath of the 1983 Supreme Court ruling that death penalty should be awarded only in 'rarest of rare' cases, incidents of capital punishment have plummeted drastically. With such a trend in hindsight, it can only be surprising that the Indian government has chosen to execute two high-profile terrorists, who have been on death row since eternity, within three months.

(2) Leaving aside Ajmal Kasab's issue for posterity, what actually demands greater attention is Afzal Guru's execution owing to the following reasons: (a) Though the law had taken its own course in deciding the fate of this terrorist, evidence against him was not as concrete as against Kasab. (b) Kasab was a Pakistani and was thus not a subject of sympathy or martyrdom anywhere in India. Guru, however, was a resident of Kashmir and his execution under the pall of uncouth secrecy and undue urgency, has enlivened the Separatists' call for 'revolution' in the trouble-torn land of Kashmir. Speed is vital but haste is fatal and it is this ugly and uncharacteristic mix of speed and haste in the Indian judiciary and other law enforcers that have marred the country's reputation this time. A country that chooses to silently execute someone, who has been on death row since 2005, can hardly be commended for that job. An unsettling fact is the growing disquiet in Kashmir, already under a protracted curfew since Guru's hanging and the fillip that militancy has garnered from this act by the government. The controversial execution of JNLF leader Maqbool Bhat in 1984 had evoked and stoked similar chords of tension in Kashmir and the country needs no reminder of the bloodbath that Kashmir witnessed after that incident.

(3)  Capital punishment, in the last two cases in India, has actually served as a tawdry means to assuage the hurt sentiments of the victims of the convicts' past actions. And it is this statement that is emphatically shining through the Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab executions. It was being said that the Indian government was being too soft on its tormentors, and that the public ire was chiefly directed against the inability of the government to protect the citizens from external and internal violence. So what does the government do? It does nothing to improve the shabbily woven security fabric of this country, effects no police reforms or judicial reforms, does nothing to stem the ever rising crescendo of corruption that is eating up every aspect of our country's external and internal security. Instead, it hauls up two prisoners, hangs the first one with such pomp and grandeur that it sends the eccentric fundamentalists of this nations baying for more blood. The magnanimous government follows this up with yet another show of high-handedness and brutality-decides to execute a death row convict, informs his family of that decision by no faster means than speed post, hangs the criminal, buries him in the backyard of the prison, and majestically enforces a curfew in the home state of the deceased to avoid the 'exchange of violent sentiments and subsequent unrest'! The common man seems to be happy with the bravado of the government that secretly kills prisoners, mauls peaceful protesters and imposes endless curfews to stop spread of violence. In an effort to teach 'an ideal lesson' to the perpetrators of violence, the whole country seems to have forgotten the basic norms of civility, decency and honesty. It is ridiculously humiliating for the 'Land of Gandhi' to breed such despicable sentiments of violence and revenge en masse.

(4) After years of scholarly research and debates and discussions, nobody has been able to certify that capital punishment has effectively worked as a deterrent to crime. It never does. What does act as a deterrent to crime is the 'fear of getting caught'! And it is this fear that ought to be instilled in the minds of the prospective criminals, howsoever small the crime might is, be it peeing by the roadside, stealing a piece of cake or a gruesome gangrape in the heart of the national capital. India will face numerous Afzal Gurus and Ajmal Kasabs in the coming years and capital punishment every time will not act as a deterrent. Instead, the nation needs to strengthen its law enforcement agencies to an extent that even breaking the traffic norms in any corner of the country shall tantamount to the offender suffering from the same amount of guilt and shame as a terrorist or a rapist does! That CAN stem the creation of any more Gurus or Kasabs, who owe their origins primarily to the vast underbelly of blatant lawlessness in India, and not the absence of capital punishment!