Perhaps we should feel happy after the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the death penalty to the culprits of the December 2012 gang-rape case. The only problem is that the so-called juvenile, who was the main culprit, will never get the punishment he deserves. He roams free just because he was able to prove that his age was 17 at the time of the crime.
We live in a country where age matters even if the crime is extreme. I think human rights activists tend to ignore the fact that crime has nothing to do with age.
The worst fact is that rapes happened before and have continued at an alarming rate after the December 2012 incident. The only ray of hope in 2012 were the mass protests that forced the administration to take action. From arresting the criminals to the court trial, everything happened at a much faster rate. The outrage also forced them to change the Juvenile Justice Act, which wasn’t enough, but still a small win.
How Long Do We Have To Wait For Justice?
Even when culprits do receive punishment, why does it take so long for them to actually start serving their sentence? Additionally, what good are these strict sentences in actually preventing the crime in the future?
In 2004, Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged for the rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl. While his guilt is still being questioned, the death penalty has done nothing to stop rapes in the past 14 years. In other cases, capital punishment has not been carried out for years, sometimes decades. According to the data, 400 prisoners are still to be executed.
So, is the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the sentence enough or just another stunt to calm public anger? No matter how hard the administration tries, unless they able to solve the problems on-ground, there is no way to deal with crime in India, and the delay of the punishment could cause more fury.
It has been over five years, how long will we have to wait until justice is served? Or we should continue with our slow judiciary process by blaming our own luck?