Mumbai: A day after the special court convicted six people including the temple priest Sanji Ram, Deepak Khajuria and Parvesh Kumar who mastermind the rape and murder case of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua, veteran lyricist-cum-scriptwriter Javed Akhtar, said that capital punishment is no deterrent to rape crime.
The court awarded the prime accused to 25 years of life imprisonment. The other three accused - Tilak Raj, Anand Dutta and Surender Verma were sentenced to five years in jail for destroying crucial evidence in the case.
Speaking of capital punishment, Akhtar said: "One thing I am sure about is that capital punishment is not a deterrent to crime because where people have banned capital punishment, the crime has not increased and in countries where the provision of capital punishment is there, the crime hasn't reduced. So, it is not a deterrent."
He further added: "I have no idea whether they should have been given capital punishment or life imprisonment is good enough, but at the same time, I must express my apprehension that we have seen many times in our society that somebody who has committed a heinous crime gets life imprisonment and after two or three years, you realise the person has been released on one ground or the other and then he or she lives happily ever after."
Capital punishment no deterrent to crime, says Javed Akhtar However, the national award winner clarified that life imprisonment is good enough further adding that "they shouldn't be having these privileges where the same person will be walking out freely after two or three years."
Speaking about the argument over capital punishment, he said: "I heard it on television that those people who are responsible for that inhuman and barbaric act have been given a life sentence. I also heard that some people were disappointed with the verdict because they thought that these people deserve capital punishment. But honestly speaking, I don't have clear cut ideas about capital punishment and whether it is right or wrong."
