Welcome and caution for Kamduni judgment - Retributive vs restorative

Ansar Ali comes out of court after being sentenced to death. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Chandrima S. Bhattacharya, TT, Jan. 30: Saturday's sentence on the Kamduni rape-and-murder case was welcomed warmly in most quarters, but those opposed to capital punishment greeted it with an amount of caution.

An activist who did not want to be named said the conviction was "positive", and it was a victory for the common people as there had been every attempt to manipulate the popular movement, but the death sentence was a "problem".

As a human rights activist, she could not support a sentence that meted out "retributive" justice, not a "restorative" one.

But others welcomed the sentence whole-heartedly.

Pradip Mukherjee, a former headmaster of Kamduni primary school who led the Kamduni "movement" demanding justice for the victim, said he was happy. He said the village had greeted the sentence warmly and "it felt like the old days again".

Politics has played a vicious role in Kamduni since the rape on June 7, 2013. The ruling party has been accused of manipulating villagers. The protesters have on several occasions complained of threats and suffered violence from alleged Trinamul supporters.

The political interference had weakened the protests. Even on Thursday, the verdict day, Mukherjee had said there could be attacks on the protesters.

But today, he said he felt no fear any more.

Shashwati Ghose of Maitree, a women's network, said she was not against capital punishment per se. "In this case, the death sentence is fitting," she said. "In any case, all (of those sentenced to death) are going to live another 20 years because of the appeals and the processes that are going to follow, as the justice delivery system is that slow," she added.

Ghose said the argument against capital punishment was that it was "irreversible", but so were other punishments, for the time lost in every case is "irreversible".

Bharati Mutsuddi, lawyer and member of the state women's commission during the Left regime, said the sentence again upheld the impartiality of the judiciary. Mutsuddi said the crime - the second-year student from Kamduni was dragged into an enclosure, raped and murdered near her village when she was returning from her college - was heinous and death was apt. She said all the six accused deserved death as all of them had been present during the incident and two of the accused should not have been acquitted.

She said the sentence had placed Bengal on a par with other parts of India, where the guilty have been punished in an exemplary manner in such cases. She hoped the Kamduni judgment would be a benchmark for later judgments.

Tumpa Koyal, the girl who had raised her voice and told chief minister Mamata Banerjee on a visit to Kamduni 10 days after the incident that the latter needed to listen to the villagers, welcomed the sentence but reminded that the "movement" had not been for the victim alone. It was for a greater development for a place like Kamduni, so that such incidents did not happen later. It was for roads, street lights, police protection. Nothing of this has happened.