Lok Satta demands capital punishment

The Lok Satta Party today demanded that the law be amended to facilitate award of capital punishment to perpetrators of crimes like rape and disfigurement of women with acid attacks. The police should be made independent and the courts made to give out their verdicts in a specified period.

“But under no circumstances police should be allowed to take law into their own hands and render instant justice,” said the Lok Satta Party.

Party spokesmen B. Krishna Reddy and Katari Srinivasa Rao told the media that the Lok Satta Party fully empathized with the parents of the Warangal girl students who fell victims of an acid attack. Perpetrators of such crimes deserve no sympathy and the harshest punishment should be meted out to them.

“But in our agony and anguish we should not condone the police killing criminals since they might kill innocents on another day at the instance of those in power or the moneyed since we live in a society which subscribes to the ‘might is right’ theory.”

The Lok Satta leaders said there had been instances of the kin of politicians in Andhra Pradesh getting away with murder while the son of a Minister in Goa accused of rape was allowed to go scot-free. Unless the police were liberated from politicians, justice would continue get derailed.

Sunday, December 14, 2008 - 14:20