QUALITY OF MERCY

Quality of mercy, said Shakespeare blesses both the giver and the bestowed equally. It is a noble gesture to forgive a wrong doer if it is done by the victim voluntarily as was the case of commutation of death sentence to Nalini one of the accused in the Rajiv assassination case. Ever since, there has been a chorus of trumpeted support for the remaining killers demanding- demanding I repeat clemency for them.

Mercy is not to be demanded as a matter of right. Those who seek mercy need to show remorse for the crime they had committed and seek with folded hands. Perarivalan, Murugan and shanthan the last two are not even Indian citizens except that they speak Tamil are unrepentant for whatever they did and bank on emotive appeals in the streets by those who are followers of the annihilated Tamil Tigers. Forget Rajiv, against whom LTTE had a grouse legitimate or otherwise, but what about other victims who lost their lives? Do their families not deserve justice? The crime has been upheld by the highest court of the land and now SC has ruled that delay in disposal of mercy petitions are not legitimate grounds for commutation of death penalty.  Initially seen as a set back, the sympathizers of these criminals now claim that the judgment has made a distinction between crimes committed by terrorists and others.

These people claim that even SC has taken the charge out of TADA reach and hence their plea falls on a different plane. There is a slanging match between DMK and AIADMK in Tamil nadu to appease this anti national section. Badal and his son camp in Delhi to commute the death penalty for Bhullar while media sits on hair splitting in the split verdict. The verdict itself is a mockery when the dissenting judges after awarding death penalty recommend that Government need to take in to account the views of presiding judge while considering clemency. They could as well  have followed the footsteps of the presiding judge if they felt , Bhullar deserved mercy. Many years later on clemency is demanded on the basis of alleged mental status of the accused.  The Government should have the courage to ignore all these pleas of so called human rights groups and execute the death penalty for these inhuman beings now.