Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has reignited the debate on death penalty or capital punishment when he tweeted “saddened by the news that our government has hanged a human being” after Yakub Memon was hanged.
Facing heavy criticism, Tharoor asserted that his statement was against death penalty, citing it as an ‘obsolete practice’ “I have not said a word on Memon case. What I tweeted was that I was not going into the merits of an individual case and it was the responsibility of the Supreme Court,” added Tharoor.
The death of capital punishment has found support from across the nation with leaders including Sitaram Yechury, D Raja, Kanimozhi, Shatrughan Sinha and Varun Gandhi.
Gandhi justified his opinion in the article “The Noose Casts A Shameful Shadow”, claiming that nearly 94% of death row convicts are Dalits or from the minorities. “The poor consistently get the short end of the legal stick. The death penalty is a consequence of poor legal representation and institutional bias. The gallows remain a poor man’s trap,” added Gandhi.
Meanwhile, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, distancing himself from fellow party member’s opinion, stated that Supreme Court announces its verdict based on the provision provided for the rarest of the rare case.
“When we implement capital punishment, we are actually acting like them. They are the murderers and the state should not act like them,” added Tharoor.
