Will hanging Nirbhaya convicts stop heinous crimes from happening, asks ex-SC Judge

Former Supreme Court judge Justice Kurian Joseph on Wednesday questioned whether heinous crimes will stop happening after the convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case are hanged.

"By hanging these people (Nirbhaya convicts), will such type of crimes stop? In Bachan Singh case, Supreme Court had said that the death penalty can be handed over in rarest of the rare cases, and that too, only when all other options are unquestionably foreclosed," retired Justice Joseph told ANI here.

He said that if people who commit such crimes are sent to jail forever, society can be told that if anyone indulges in such sort of crimes, they will be behind bars forever whereas people forget about the crime after the execution.

"I don't think that by hanging the four convicts the parents of Nirbhaya will get justice. I have all sympathies definitely for the parents of the victim. I really feel sorry," retired Justice Joseph said.

"Gandhi Ji had said that an eye for eye will only make the world blind. So in criminal justice procedure, there is nothing called vengeance. If I take your life that means you will take mine. This is not justice. Vengeance and retribution are two different concepts altogether," he added.

Retired Justice Joseph said the purpose of punishment is retribution, restitution and reformation.

"According to me even if the court has left out considering any of these aspects at the time of the considering the mercy petition, the President and the government also have a duty to take into account some of these aspects," he said.

Justice does not mean life for a life, he said adding that the absence of freedom is the worst that a person can have.

This comes as the four convicts in the 2012 case -- Mukesh Singh, Akshay Singh Thakur, Pawan Gupta, and Vinay Sharma -- are scheduled to be hanged at 5:30 am on March 20.

The case pertains to the brutal gang-rape and killing of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012, by six people including a juvenile in the national capital. The woman had died at a Singapore hospital a few days later.