DEATH PENALTY- JUSTIFIED OR NOT.

 After seven years of committing the most reprehensible of crimes, when the alleged rapists of Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case were hanged after three months of delayed judgement, a very famous question of whether capital punishment awarded to perpetrators for committing crimes against women is justified or not, rose. Many scholarly articles started flooding the internet, a vast set of people supporting the law took to one side of the story while the others advocating the rights administered to a human being by the very supreme court, took to another. It is not very unlikely of people to take sides and form opinions of their own when an issue like this brings to the light of the day. Still, in cases like these, wherein the scenario itself is lacking the humanity as

mentioned earlier in question, the decision making power should be

vested with an institution experienced enough with the systematic process of bringing justice to home, aka, in this situation, The Hon'ble Supreme Court of the country, There is undoubtedly an incredible rise in the crime rate concerning particularly violent crimes against women. By statistics in the year

2016, assaults cases climbed by sixty per cent to around forty thousand the nation over. This has made the criminal sentencing of the courts a subject matter of concem. According to one of the previous hon'ble Chief Justices of the country, "The sentencing policy adopted by the Courts, in such cases, ought to have a stricter yardstick to act as a deterrent. There are a shockingly large number of cases where the sentence of punishment awarded to the accused is not in proportion to the gravity and magnitude of the offence thereby encouraging the criminal, and in the ultimate making justice suffer by weakening the system's credibility"

The supreme court in one of its judgements noted that the punishments awarded in cases of crimes against women are too soft on the perpetrators. It has also, over the years, maintained that in heinous crimes, including both damage and shock, the extreme punishment of death by hanging is more than just justified. Hon'ble Justice Dattu has also observed that "The extreme punishment of death would be justified and necessary in cases where the collective conscience of society is so shocked that it will expect the holders of judicial power to inflict death penalty irrespective of their personal

opinion" Even if we flip through the pages of Manusmriti, the world's very first code of law given by Manu, capital punishment has been justified as a systematic remedy clearly in line with the matter at hand. Even though we find such instances wherein capital punishment seems to be the right fit, not everyone in the world accepts it as the only way to provide justice. Presently the death penalty is awarded only to cases following the "rarest of rare" doctrine. The interpretation of such cases is left to the court.

Even if we leave it to highest of authorities to decide whether capital punishment is the right fit for a democratic nation like ours, the question will yet remain unanswered since it is complicated to come to a consensus with the present India. The young minds of this generation are very dynamic in nature, and there is no decision whatsoever capable of being appreciated by them all.