Not all murders deserve the same punishment |
The family of Mohammad Akhlaq has challenged the Uttar Pradesh government’s application seeking withdrawal of prosecution against the accused in Akhlaq’s murder. A Noida court has accepted this application. Akhlaq’s family has asked a simple question: is beating a man to death with sticks a less serious crime? They were forced to ask this because the government has downgraded the gravity of the offence by arguing that no weapons were recovered from the accused.
The government also argued, in defence of the murder accused, that the crime should not be treated as particularly serious because there was no personal enmity between the accused and Akhlaq. Its principal argument for withdrawing the case is that doing so would help maintain social harmony.
But beyond all this, the government has said something else that deserves closer scrutiny. It said the meat recovered from Akhlaq’s house was beef. This ‘fact’ was introduced to suggest that the accused did not kill Akhlaq without a valid reason. They attacked him because they suspected there was beef in his house. In other words, he was killed in the service of faith.
Akhlaq had committed the gravest sin, and his Hindu neighbours awarded him the death penalty for it—a punishment that, in the government’s eyes, is excusable. It should not even be counted as a crime. The government was not merely stating the cause of the murder—it was attempting to justify it.
At the previous hearing, the court asked the government whether there was any precedent for withdrawing a murder case. What it asks next remains to be seen. The court’s final decision will also tell us whether Manusmriti has now been formally implemented in India or not.
While reviewing the government’s outlook in the Akhlaq murder case, it wouldn’t be amiss to........