Merciful President & the Quest for Justice

The latest act of our honourable president has shocked me a lot! The president has a special power, to pardon the death sentence of criminals. Any good president accepts the mercy petition of criminals in exceptional circumstances.

Indian courts by nature are super slow and super merciful too! Hardly is anyone given capital punishment. Possibly the president wanted to appear as a devi of mercy but she has gone way too far! She accepted mercy petition of 30 criminals which is a ridiculous number in itself. On top of that the president pardoned such men who committed such heinous acts that one wonders what were the basis on which the president gave clemency to these criminals.

Here are some of the cases pardoned by the President:-

Satish had murdered six year old Visakha in Uttar Pradesh in 2001. The brutalised body of the victim was found in a sugarcane field after Satish raped her.

Molai Ram and Santosh Yadav had gangraped and murdered the 10 year old daughter of a jailor on the prison premises where they were lodged in Madhya Pradesh in 1996.

Two UP convicts - Dharmender Singh and Narendra Yadav in 1994, had killed five members of a family, including a couple and their three minor children (two sons aged 12 and a 15 year old daughter). The girl was also assaulted sexually. Narendra had tried to rape her a few days before the coldblooded murders when she was returning from school. When he failed to outrage her modesty, Narendra conspired with Dharmender to teach the family a lesson by wiping it out.

Six other men had killed four persons in a horrific manner in 1990. While three of the victims were beheaded, a 10 year old boy was tossed into a fire and roasted alive.

In 1991, Piara Singh and his three sons massacred 17 persons of a wedding party with whom they had personal rivalry, those killed included 4 children.

If you look at all these cases – they are all older than 10 years. The families of the victims must have gone through so much pain and endless court hearings and finally death sentence was given to the people who harmed their loved ones. And now, the president has pardoned these killers. If she wanted to show she is merciful, does being merciful mean causing more pain to the victims than perpetrators? Where is the mercy and where is the justice for the victims here?

Another point of view to look at it is the status of children and women in this country. Such heinous crimes! Rape in India is treated in a very trivial manner. Either its not reported, or punished or a punishment of mere 7 years is given in most cases. Infact it’s a crime which is so alarmingly high in this country that you wonder what is it with these men, are they even humans? If we look at the cases above, they must truly be so exceptional that the courts decided to give the criminals death sentence. Years of trial and finally a sentence was reached. It would have set a precedent in Indian society. Maybe it would have made people realize that they can’t just go ahead and rape someone and live happily ever after and go scott-free as is mostly the case in Indian society. But the president, by pardoning such cases has again sent the message that women and children are not safe in this country. You can be raped, you can be roasted alive and you can be brutally killed and its perfectly alright. Why, if a person fails to rape you, he will come to your house, assault you sexually and kill your entire family. 

The symbol of justice is blindfolded so that she can ensure everyone is given impartial justice but our president has in an attempt to become the symbol of mercy, destroyed everything that justice, mercy or humanity stands for.