Sunday, July 3, 2011

Missing the point.....

There is an old saying - that lock's are to prevent the honest from stealing. The thief, if smart and expert enough, will anyway break and lock and steal. The same logic can actually be extended to laws, judiciary, police and all that. The fact that killing someone leads to life imprisonment MIGHT deter an office going, middle class person, but not a professional killer. By punishing one, you tell other potential criminals, this is what will happen to you, are you willing to risk that??

Some Mallu, who is in the Navy, kills another guy, when he sees him at his girlfriend's house, and assumes/concludes they been sleeping together. Fine, as the judge said, a prudent cannot accept that and he killed him in a minutes insanity. Crime, but can be defended, punishment scaled down. Then the couple has sex (or, as the girl claims, she was raped) with the corpse still in the house. Fine, some emotional reunion maybe. Not a crime, just seems weird, but just might indicate a relaxed state of mind, after doing / witnessing a murder.

Then they think about what to do with the body. And then, very cruelly, in a gruesome manner, with a cool mind, they take steps to chop it into pieces and dispose it in jungle. Guy goes back home, girl goes and registers a police complaint about the guy being missing. And they have gone unpunished!

Ok, the guy has been convicted for murder and destroying evidence, while the girl has been convicted of just destroying evidence. 10 years and 3 years respectively, and the girl has walked out free today. She did not deserve to.

But the point is, the main crime was not the killing. A 1000 people are killed daily - by insurgents, by criminals, by armies, by police and so on. The main crime, was the thought in their mind, that the law will never catch up with them. That their gruesome crime will never be caught. That they can get away with it. That has not been punished.

So, is the court telling us, in effect, you can kill people, play victim and get away with it?

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