This is perhaps my 10th letter on the subject because I firmly believe that punishment is the best deterrent to crush crime. It is, however, surprising that while the daily newspapers are flooded with crime news there are no items indicating punishments awarded to the offenders. With the legal cases taking years and years to decide the jails are full with criminals posing serious problems for the administration. The common excuses put forth are; (1) the police does not register the cases promptly or properly thus delaying the start of legal process, (2) the culprits having disappeared from the scene are untraceable, (3) the postmortem reports are fabricated, (4) the eye witnesses are not available because the people do not come forward to give evidence etc etc. All this happening on account of inefficiency and corruption on the part of the officials concerned has gone unchecked for decades. I mention below a murder case to which these excuses do not apply.

According to a news item which appeared the other day, a girl who married without the consent of his family was shot dead by his brother in a court room. The killer was arrested by the police along with the weapon. In this case all those present in the court room including the magistrate, police as well as family members of the girl and the boy are eye witnesses. Why can’t the case be decided in a week or a month and the killer awarded proper punishment? This is not the only case of its nature. There have been many crimes in the past of which the culprits were caught on the spot but were dumped in the jail or set free to maintain the common practice.
According to another news, while there are around 600 death row prisoners in our jails, President Zardari has ordered ‘no executions’ to take place. While Islam lays down ‘hanging’ as punishment for those committing murder, rape and other heinous crimes why are we not abiding by the law which is also a part of our judicial system. The President is either trying to please the Amnesty International which advocates a ban on capital punishment or siding with the criminals as against the sorrow and grief suffered by the families who lost their dear ones as victims of the crime. I am sorry to say that unless we change our attitude the crime will continue to flourish in our dear Pakistan.
RAFI NASIM,
Lahore August-6.