Nine months after the crime that shook the conscience of the Country,
the verdict was announced; fast by the standards of the Country in question. The
death sentence, to some extent, provided a bit of a closure to all the people
who, in one way or another, became related to the incident; the family of the
victim, the family of the late Constable Subhash Tomar who died in the protests
following the crime, the thousands of protesters who came out to the streets, hundreds
of police personnel who had their own struggle during the protests and (a safe
assumption) a vast majority of the citizens. The gruesomeness of the inhuman
act committed by those “humans” on that cold December night may cause many a
humanitarian minds to agree that death is the only fitting punishment for them.
For now therefore, the disturbing episode seems to have taken a justified turn.
If asked to mention the one word, around which the events of
December 16, 2012 and the subsequent protests seem to revolve, a plethora of
answers may result. The one that struck my mind was misery.
Misery; because the one of the basic traits that distinguish
us as humans were compromised by members of our own species. Misery; because of
the loss suffered by the friends and families of the Braveheart and Constable
Tomar. Misery; because even after stringent amendments to the law, there is a
questionable level of security available to the Nation’s women (disturbingly including
the minor female children). Misery; because the most fierce and brutal of the
six attackers would walk free after spending a little over 28 months in a
juvenile detention home. Misery; because the five young adults who gave in to
perversion and resorted to fulfilling a short term urge, and who now face the
gallows, paid no importance to the long, perhaps even promising, lives that
lied ahead of them. Misery; because of the helplessness of the convict’s
families.
The entire episode may paint a sorrowful picture and it may
appear that nothing even remotely fruitful may result as a consequence of the
tragic event. An observation of the practices sometimes followed in a country a
bit eastwards of our own may suggest otherwise.
The aforementioned state of misery is ever present. It
existed before December 16, 2012 and will continue to be in existence for
decades following this date. Shortage of blood at transfusion departments of
hospitals, shortage of donors of vital organs and the like make their own
contributions to the miseries of the present day. This point needs to be made
right now because it will be referenced later on in this text.
These five convicts; keeping them alive (by reducing their
punishment to life imprisonment, not a completely impossible event) will only
result in the further squandering of the limited resources of a planet no less
abused, notwithstanding at a different level, than the young girl last December.
Death penalty, as harsh as it may appear for the convicts, is but a comeuppance.
A different way of ending their lives however, may yield some value out of the hopelessness
of this entire episode.
Consider the flowing hypothetical situation; a sudden death,
say delivered in form of a bullet to the forehead (other ways are also possible),
followed by quick extraction of the cadaver’s blood for possible use in transfusion,
“salvaging” vital and non vital organs and using the extracts to benefit patients
in need may result in improvement in the lives of the patients in question. The
five convicts already died ten months ago, though their bodies have some
catching up to do. Utilizing whatever bio-extracts, in form of tissues, organs
and fluids, may only help reduce someone else’s misery elsewhere. Such a
biological salvaging in favour of those who may otherwise face long waiting
times for the right type of bio-extract, and consequently face further medical
complications due to too much of a delay, probably promises to be the only
positive at the end of a trail of negatives left behind as the consequences of
the disgraceful and deplorable incident.
