Crime and Over-Punishment

PUTTING A MAN or woman in jail for life is usually reserved for crimes of extraordinary gravity. Someone who commits a deliber­ated murder or an acid attack should deservedly be barred from society because the damage caused is irrevers­ible. Likewise, hardened criminals who are a constant threat to others should, having expended the patience of the state, be stowed away so that the rest can live in peace. After capital punishment, life sentence is the last card to be pulled out and it ought to be a weapon wielded with circumspection. Should it therefore really be used against the leaking of examination papers?

This is what the Rajasthan govern­ment is about to do. Paper leaks became a hot potato political issue in the state two years ago after it happened in an exam that selects teachers in government schools. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is also facing rebellion within his party from Sachin Pilot who has turned such leaks into one of his main planks. Gehlot’s solution, as tweeted this week: “It has been decided to bring a Bill in the upcoming Assem­bly session to make life imprisonment the maximum punishment under the law against paper leaks.” Last year, it had already been made 10 years of jail. What are the odds that anyone who continues to do it, despite the threat of a decade in prison, will be deterred by life? And is any rational judge even go­ing to give this maximum punishment for such a crime?

Indians like to believe they are governed by law but in reality, as anyone who has stepped into a police station or court knows, it is mostly an illusion. It is a struggle to register cases and even more taxing for a conclusive justice in the judicial system that grinds at a snail’s pace under the load of its own chaos. Elites fare better but even they can fall into the black hole of the system, like Shah Rukh Khan’s son. But because the illusion has to be maintained, the solution govern­ments and political leaders come up with is to make new laws, toughen up old ones on paper, or apply stringent ones reserved for special cases to other crimes. In Madhya Pradesh, there was the shocking case of a man urinating on a tribal labourer that was caught on camera, a deplorable act that rightly outraged everyone. But he is being charged with the National Security Act (NSA). The Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atroci­ties) Act, which has also been applied, is a tough law and appropriate in this case. Applying NSA is just political mes­saging, hardly the purpose for why it exists. But in an imploded system, what sanctity can the intent of a law retain?

Using NSA to a man who urinates on another human being is not going to evoke disagreement because of the anger the public feel against him. But that is then setting a precedent to use it for any case arbitrarily, the process by which life imprisonment for leaking exam papers becomes a casual an­nouncement no one is surprised by.

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