Sunday, Oct 12, 2003
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Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram
By Our Staff Reporter
Delivering the second K.S. Rajamani memorial lecture on `Capital punishment and human rights', organised by the K.S. Rajamani Foundation here on Friday, Mr. Thomas said civilised nations had scrapped the provision for capital punishment and India too should follow suit soon. Capital punishment is justified only in those cases in which life imprisonment is inadequate, he said. He said that life imprisonment was not a foreclosed option. The dominating factor of punishment should be reformation. Punishment should be a deterrent, but retribution is uncivilised, he said. The vengeful thirst for blood is primitive, he added. He suggested that a comparative study be done on capital punishment and life imprisonment. No such study had been done to see whether capital punishment would bring down the rate of murder or whether life imprisonment would lead to its increase. Only a case study has been conducted, he said. He pointed out that capital punishment was abolished in the erstwhile State of Travancore in 1940 and it was revived in 1950. The case study revealed that the number of murders had doubled in the period between 1950 and 1960, when compared to the previous decade. Capital punishment cannot prevent people prone to committing murder, he said. He cited the case of Hoffman, who was executed in the U.K. for killing his 12-year-old step-daughter. The girl returned after 12 years. The same thing could happen elsewhere too, he said.
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