From Individual Violence to Collective Violence?

Prabuddha Bagchi

The criminal deserves tobe punished after a proper investigation but does that give people the right to decide what punishment will be appropriate in the case? Here is a story of a school teacher from Junglemahal who was much loved by his students. One day, a group of assassins rushed into class and brutally murdered him in front of the students; later they wrote in red ink that he was killed because of his involvement with the ruling party. This was the supposed system of justice among the Maoists and this was the punishment that “criminals” deserved. Among the sal and mahua forests in Binpur a Maoist squad was hiding and making preparations for armed struggle; in the dead of the night, the Joint Special Forces attacked the guerilla fighters and upon killing them hung them from the bamboo trees and had posed with their dead bodies for photo journalists. It cannot be determined if justice would have been delivered in either of the cases and even if the cases went to court, the verdict cannot be predicted.

The ‘60s and ‘70s were a period of immense turmoil and state-sponsored murders in the history of West Bengal. Many murders had unnecessarily taken place under the garb of political conflicts; young students had been encountered by police forces on grounds of baseless suspicion and none of these victims have been given justice yet. Does that mean that to punish the people involved in these crimes the gallows have to be operated for six to eight months continuously until each and every criminal has been punished? This would set off a chain of events where new narratives would constantly keep on arising and the gallows would never stop operating.

The state has a structure in place for the criminals and multiple provisions are laid down to correctly punish them for their crimes. Under the concept of the welfare state, the term ‘prison’ has been replaced with ‘correctional home’ in the last few decades. This implies that the state will take an active part in reforming the criminals and help them fix their lives instead of sending them directly to the gallows. This change also has had positive effects, leading to the reformation of some criminals. The infamous Rashid Khan, also known as “Satta Don”, who was jailed for his imprisonment in the Bow Bazar bomb blast case, now teaches painting to the other inmates at the Presidency Correctional Facility. Debjani Mukhopadhyay, the convict in the Sarada Chit Fund Scam acts as a teacher to her fellow convicts at the Dum Dum Central Jail. Those who have read Itibritte Chandal Jibonby Manoranjan Byapari do know that when he was convicted, the first person to give him formal education was a fellow convict who had been sentenced to life imprisonment and who also happened to be a teacher. If not for the teacher, Manoranjan Byapari would never have been able to become a writer. Before the release of the Bengali film Muktodhara, Alokanada Roy had surprised everyone by casting convicts punished with life imprisonment in her rendition of the play Balmiki Pratibha— the play gained so much fame that under popular demand it was performed at the famous Rabindra Sadan Theatre. Nigel Akkara aka Vicky, a convict charged with eighteen murders, got a chance to meet Alokanada Roy at her house during this time; he recalls fondly how Alokanada Roy had given him an opportunity to turn his life around and how he refers to her as ‘Maa’(Mother). He also told how he had cried his heart out in an empty Rabindra Sadan Theatre and stated his desire to purge himself of his sins. These are not just mere romanticised stories; there hides in all these a sense of humanity and hope for a brighter future. Unfortunately, there has been a constant attempt throughout the socio-political scene to hide this hope for humanity under the garb of vengeance, thus trying to erase any chance of possible redemption. There has grown a sense of delusion in the minds of the people with regard to differentiating between the nature of the crime and the nature of the criminals. Due to the growing distance between the administrative and legislative powers, have people put more faith in them? In truth people blindly trust the judge to give the correct punishment but if the punishment does not live up to the expectations they do not even have a second thought before tearing into the decision and start calling for mob justice.

Before the French Revolution, if a person committed suicide their naked body would be hung upside-down and burnt as committing suicide was a crime. Guillotine and beheading in medieval times were followed by the method of the electric chair as a form of capital punishment. Mussolini and Hitler had made capital punishment into a form of display as if it were a ‘classical art’- in retaliation; Mussolini was publicly hanged till death. Even in Medieval India, there was an established gory custom of ‘gifting’ someone the decapitated head of an individual either as revenge or announcing the start of a war. The Gods and Goddesses have also been referred to in the Puranas as having doled out gruesome punishments such as incinerating or completely destroying individuals, thus displaying cruel tendencies.  

Humanity tends to learn its lessons from history; thus capital punishment has been done away with in most countries post-Second World War- the concept of ‘an eye for an eye’ acting as a deterrent to major crimes has been done away with by the majority of the world. Although the First Prime Minister of India had proclaimed the hanging of all black marketeers from lampposts, that did nothing to stop it and had zero effectivity. Criminologists have long since theorised that capital punishment does not play a ‘deterrent factor’ in the process of curbing serious criminal activity and the biggest example of that is the thousands of crimes taking place against women in the country on a daily basis. Even after this, why are people still crying out for the hanging of criminals? Are they only concerned with the idea of revenge as a form of justice? Do they want the ideas of collective violence to mar the judgements given out to criminals?

The verdict by the court which has caused such a hue and cry has been delivered only after studying all the evidence and forensic reports- and the conclusion thus drawn is that the crime was committed by a single individual. Commenting on the progress of the investigation, the judge said that the Investigating Officer of the CBI had created a ‘chain of events’ on the basis of all the evidence gathered and the judge had followed this ‘chain’ and delivered a 172-page verdict after cross-examination. In the judgement, the judge provided all the minute details and analysis and also referred to a Supreme Court case from 2022(Manoj and Ors. versus State of Madhya Pradesh) where the ‘judiciary had become hungry for blood’ and opposing it said that although the crime at R G Kar was horrid and vile; he would not deliver the sentence of capital punishment but would rather subject the convict to life imprisonment and path of reformation.

Do they want a person to be hanged or do they want the proper investigation and correct punishment and subsequent incarceration of all criminals involved? Strangely enough, R G kar agitationists still continue to ask for people to be given capital punishment even when they have the examples of Dhanonjoy Chattopadhyay’s ‘wrongful punishment’. There was no proper investigation held before sending Afzal Guru to the gallows to be hanged which people have learned from Kobad Ghandy’s book Fractured Freedom. It has also happened that the capital punishment ordered by a lower court has been overturned by the higher court. It also must not be forgotten that the rapists of BilkisBano were given freedom by the efforts of the state and commemorated with garlands upon their freedom. In the recently released Feluda web series based on Satyajt Ray’s Bhushorgo Bhoyonkor, people see a retired judge facing a sense of guilt with regards to certain cases of capital punishment he had delivered. In the renowned Bengali film Sabar Uporey people are told the story of a wrongful incarceration; thus one sees that even in literature there is a presence of ‘unfair’ judgement and after a point these judgements stand on minute personal observations. In such cases, close scrutiny becomes the utmost priority for proper judgement to be delivered and the judgement by the lower court shows the strictness of close scrutiny followed by the judge.

Nobody is in favour of minimising the crimes of the main culprits and subsequently judging them; people want the criminals to be deservedly punished but the rise of public courts and how they have jumped to pushing for capital punishment of the convict is a matter worth raising concern about and finding the answer to it seems very difficult. At one point in time, mob lynching had become a serious issue all across the state and keeping that in mind KabirSuman had penned the song Kandte De. In that song there is a description of a match being lit in the eyes of a boy after having been severely beaten up by the public. Violence promoted by the entire community is much more harmful than individual violence as it turns an entire mass of people against a few thus having the potential to swing even the court’s opinion in some cases. The champions of collective punishment, in realty, look willing to forgo even their humanity for the sake of “justice”.

[This is a slightly shortened version of an article originally published in Bengali on-line magazine EkakMatra. Translated by Aryaveer Das]

Back to Home Page

Frontier
Vol 57, No. 36, March 2 - 8, 2025