Something fishy

Never before has there been such an outcry over the execution of a convict as we saw during the hanging of Yakub Memon. Keeping the merits of this case apart, the haste in which the execution has been carried out shows that there was something fishy. The resignation and objections of the deputy registrar of the Supreme Court over the issue has raised further doubts. Capital punishment is harsh and it needs to be commuted to life imprisonment or something else. While the execution of Afzal Guru was called to be necessitated by an urge of ‘collective conscience’, the hanging of Yakub Memon was apparently carried to calm ‘national conscience’. 

Questions should have been answered before Yakub’s execution because now, they raise serious doubts about the real motives. Why does the law in these cases take so much timeIJ There cannot be two measures to deal with the perpetrators of the same crime because they represent different conscience.