Shashi Tharoor questions 'principle and practice of death penalty'

Soon after 1993 Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memon was hanged, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday stirred a controversy by saying 'cold-blooded execution has never prevented a terror attack anywhere' and added that the principle and practice of death penalty is questionable.

"I didn't say anything about any individual, I didn't say anything political. I merely said very clearly, in fact, I have said in black and white, that the merit of any individual case is not the issue. That is for the Supreme Court to decide and the Supreme Court has done its work," Tharoor told the media here.

"What I have said is that the principle and practice of the death penalty is questionable, and there, I continue as a personal individual conviction to believe that a death penalty is wrong. It has been very arbitrarily and unevenly applied in our country....it has no deterrent effect," he added.

He further stressed that there is co-relation between the death penalty and preventing crimes or terrorism.

"So, it is actually neither morally justifiable nor it is effective in serving the purpose that people claim it suppose to serve. All death penalty does is exact retribution, revenge. Should the state government be reducing itself to the level of murderers and terrorist by taking human life? This is the issue. We are talking about the principle of whether the society and the government and the state that speaks in our name should be behaving like a killer?" he said.

"I don't think if that is what we should be doing. We should punish and take other actions, but we should not be taking human life. It is a simple principle" he added.

Earlier in the day, Tharoor had posted, "Saddened by news that our government has hanged a human being. State-sponsored killing diminishes us all by reducing us to murderers too."

"There is no evidence that death penalty serves as a deterrent: to the contrary in fact. All it does is exact retribution: unworthy of a Govt. We must fight against terrorism w/all the means at our command. But cold-blooded execution has never prevented a terror attack anywhere," he added.

"I'm not commenting on the merits of a specific case: that's for the Supreme Court to decide. Problem is death penalty in principle and practice," he said in a series of tweets.