Medieval Mores

Shocking as the crimes of the Pakistani serial killer were, the sentence passed against him by a Lahore court is no less ghastly.

It is just as well, therefore, that the military government has let it be known that the sentence strangling the convict to death and then cutting his body up in a hundred pieces before dissolving them in acid cannot be carried out because Pakistan has to abide by the stipulations of the Human Rights Commission. The judge's explanation for his grisly verdict was that the accused had killed 100 children and dissolved their bodies in acid. But in equating his punishment to the barbaric methods of the assassin, the judge has violated a basic tenet of modern jurisprudence.

 

It is that in responding to a crime, no matter how heinous and revolting, the judiciary cannot descend to the criminal's level. A civilised world has to evolve and follow its own rules, characterised by a humane approach even when dealing with the cruelties of the most barbaric and sadist of people. If the dignified norms of civilisation are allowed to be distorted by the anger felt against acts of depravity, it will indeed be a victory for the forces of evil. If barbarism is allowed to become the natural response to barbarism, then there is no certainty about how deep mankind will sink into an abyss. Such a descent into a veritable hell is all the more possible if the kind of torture prescribed by the judge is carried out in public, as he has also suggested. It is very likely that while the suffering of the victim will make some among the audience turn away in disgust, others both children and adults of a cruel bent of mind will feel justified in inflicting similar pain on people in their control. This was the reason why public hangings were stopped in the West and elsewhere, and the medieval routine of an eye for an eye was buried in the pages of history. The revival of public floggings in Pakistan in Zia-ul-Haq's time indicated a retreat to the dark ages. It is hoped that the shocking sentence passed in Lahore will not be allowed to accelerate the process of regression.