Eye for an eye?

ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to your reports on the story of the rape and murder of a four year-old girl in Karachi. Sickened as I am by this story, I am also very disturbed by the kind of comments being made such as “hang him publicly”, “castrate him publicly” etc. While it enrages me that someone would commit violence of this kind the response is symptomatic of how violent Pakistani society has become. How about we arrest him, try him for his crime and let him serve the sentence that the court decides on? Violence does not cancel out violence, it merely begets more.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 23^rd, 2010.