Releasing Rajiv Gandhi’s killers

How much punishment should murderers be given? We are debating that in India this week after a decision to release half a dozen men and a woman convicted of killing Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Three of the killers were sentenced to death, but the Supreme Court decided that they had been on death row too long, and that their punishment should therefore be a life sentence. Then the state where they are being held, Tamil Nadu, decided to release all of them on the grounds that they had already been in jail 23 years, and that was long enough.

The killers are Tamilians and it is thought the decision to set them free was made for political reasons.

The Congress party is furious and called Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha’s decision ‘irresponsible, perverse and populist’.

Rahul Gandhi said: “My father became a martyr. We are against the death penalty. If a prime minister’s (PM) killers are being released, what kind of justice should the common man expect? In this country, even the PM does not get justice. This is my heart’s voice.”

This was not the right thing to say because the fact is that he did get justice. Two-thirds of murder accused in India are never convicted, and that is usually the sort of justice the common man gets.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also felt the decision to let the killers go was wrong because “the assassination of Shri Rajiv Gandhi was an attack on the soul of India”. I do not know what that means. Do nations have souls? Can these be attacked? The fact is that the attack was on people (Gandhi was not the only person killed in the suicide bombing) and the case was about that. Singh added: “The release of the killers of a former prime minister of India and our great leader, as well as several other innocent Indians, would be contrary to all principles of justice.”

What principle of justice has been violated here? What Singh is demanding — perpetual imprisonment for murderers — suggests vengeance, not justice. For good measure, Singh also threw in the line that “no government or party should be soft in our fight against terrorism”.

In 2012, the Supreme Court had determined what a life sentence meant: “It appears to us there is a misconception that a prisoner serving a life sentence has an indefeasible right to be released on completion of either 14 years or 20 years imprisonment. The prisoner has no such right,” the Court judged, and therefore, “a convict undergoing life imprisonment is expected to remain in custody till the end of his life, subject to any remission granted by the appropriate government”.

Last year, in another case, the Supreme Court had defined such cases to make it easy for the government. It said: “Certain murders shock the collective conscience of the Court and community. Heinous rape of a minor followed by murder is one such instance of a crime, which shocks and repulses the collective conscience of the community and the court … we are of the view that such crimes, which shock the collective conscience of society by creating extreme revulsion in the minds of the people, are to be treated as the rarest of rare category.”

Does it apply in the Gandhi case? I’m not sure. This ‘rarest of rare’ business is something few really understand and the fact is that Indian courts keep sentencing so many people to death that rarest of rare has lost meaning. It is also not clear what ‘collective conscience’ means and how it expresses itself. Anyway, the Supreme Court had probably not anticipated the release of the Tamilians when it changed their sentence from death to life. Reports said the Court felt that “although Tamil Nadu had the right to release the prisoners”, it “was concerned about procedural lapses”.

And so, the release of the murderers has been stayed for now.

It is difficult for me to see what is wrong in releasing killers after 23 years of their lives have been spent in jail. The daughter of two of the convicts, who lives in Britain, said: “I’m really sorry for Rahul Gandhi. My parents have regretted enough, they deserve forgiveness. I can understand losing someone you love. I have suffered the same punishment. I deserve to be with my parents,” said 22-year-old Harithra Sriharan, “though I have parents who are alive, I have never had them”.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.