Skip to main content

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence


The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [John 11: 50]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context.

A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone.

Do you think that creature is human?

I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya.

The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhuman. And he is a threat to civilised society. He is a threat to humanity. If the death of one creature is better for humanity, why not go ahead with that death?

Kerala’s court of justice ordered that death. But the Supreme Court commuted that to life sentence. Capital punishment is uncivilised, the apex court thought. Is it really?

The escape of Govindachamy from prison proves yet again that some people are irredeemable. Remember also that this man has only one arm. With that one arm, he committed brutal crimes. Now with that one hand again, he cut the bars of his prison cell and jumped a wall that is six metres (20 feet) tall.

It is possible that he got help from outside. There are more criminals outside our prisons than inside. Some of the men among the police are no better than the criminals behind the bars they guard.

It is good to clean up the society every now and then. It is better for the society that one Govindachamy dies…

… so that ‘normal’ people can live – with dignity, in peace.

Govindachamys do not merely break laws; they trample on the social contract that allows civilisation to function. It is not one Saumya that is killed by this Govindachamy; it is the very hope of mankind for a better society.

There is also another important question. Why should the state carry the burden of such a person for decades? This creature called Govindachamy lived in prison and all his expenditure from food and clothes to security was funded by the taxpayers.

Another more important question: the surviving family members of the victims. How do you convince them of justice when the murderer of their beloved family member is given a chance to escape to freedom from a prison with steel bars and 6-metre-tall walls?

Keeping some creatures alive is not compassion; it is cruelty to future victims and an insult to past ones. A prison escape by Govindachamy is not just a failure of the system; it is a betrayal of the idea that justice must mean what it promises to be. Capital punishment is not revenge, as I am told by many preachers. Capital punishment is about protecting the living and honouring the dead.

 

Labels:

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJuly 25, 2025 at 1:46 PM

    Hari Om
    On this we must disagree... the bible verse pertains to sacrifice and not punishment. Another bible quote would advise that the lost sheep is the one requiring most care from the shepherd. If one's trust is in the teachings of Jesus then correction and forgiveness, the guidance to repentence is the apt response. If revenge is sought, look to the old books of Exodus, Leviticus...

    Undoubtedly the crime was heinous. Think on all the rapes that have - and continue to be - enacted. Murders too. Most go undetected, never mind unpunished. As dreadful as this fellow may be, why should he carry the force of hatred poured out from pained souls who will not be healed by his death. Grief has no salve - least of all by becoming the takers of life ourselves.

    The escape as you describe it (and his incapacity) must surely have been 'arranged' and this must be investigated. The very description means he will be easily spotted, unless, again, he is aided. Let all effort be in retrieving the criminal and placing him once again under the 'shepherds care'. Let him endure the restriction and rigors of incarceration until his natural death, just as those upon whom he wrought grief must carry that to their graves... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 25, 2025 at 5:03 PM

      I can only say that my insincts revolt against this kind of creatures. Call me what you will. I will defend death sentence to certain creatures.

      The god of the Bible is a lot more brutal. Sadist.

      Delete
  2. Jose D. MaliekalJuly 25, 2025 at 3:08 PM

    There would be people among the jail top brass abetting him. Otherwise, how would he escape? He seems another Charles Shobraj, of yesteryears. From. Which jail did he escape? As much as you would like him hanged, law has his leniencies and loopholes.. And higher judiciary is no great mood for capital punishment! And I checked the BNS to see whether Govindachami stands for any compounded punishment. Just another thee years more, perhaps after he is caught.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 25, 2025 at 5:05 PM

      Since he's got back, I don't know what to say about the complicity of the police. Could the whole thing be a drama created by certain powerful vested interests?

      Delete
    2. Jose D. MaliekalJuly 25, 2025 at 6:55 PM

      I presume even the rape and killing of Soumya, years back is part of a wider conspiracy and Govindachamy, just a facade and pawn and a cover-up. She would have spurned the overtures of some bigwig or his son, probably.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 25, 2025 at 7:03 PM

      This is highly possible. And that bigwig may be behind this escape, though a failed attempt now.

      Delete
  3. magiceyeJuly 25, 2025 at 6:12 PM

    What about the people who have climbed up the political ladder built with corpses!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 25, 2025 at 6:48 PM

      That's a mystical question, almost. Give me power and I will clean up the entire Augean stables.

      Delete
  4. Liz A.July 26, 2025 at 2:55 AM

    I've always had a problem with capital punishment. You can't take it back if there was a miscarriage of justice. And at least where I live, there are so many people slated to die who were actually innocent of the crimes they were convicted of. Death is a kind of release. If you want someone punished, better to keep them alive to do it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 26, 2025 at 6:32 AM

      The man in this post has been caught again. 14 years in prison didn't teach him anything. Another 14 won't either.

      Delete
  5. peppylady (Dora)July 26, 2025 at 3:23 AM

    I have issue with capital punishment.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Indian Knowledge Systems

Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book back in 2018 to explore the paradoxes that constitute the man called Narendra Modi. Paradoxes dominate present Indian politics. One of them is what’s called the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS). What constitute the paradox here are two parallel realities: one genuinely valuable, and the other deeply regressive. The contributions of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta to mathematics, Panini to linguistics, Vedanta to philosophy, and Ayurveda to medicine are genuine traditions that may deserve due attention. But there’s a hijacked version of IKS which is a hilariously, if not villainously, political project. Much of what is now packaged as IKS in government documents, school curricula, and propaganda includes mythological claims treated as historical facts, pseudoscience (e.g., Ravana’s Pushpaka Vimana as a real aircraft or Ganesha’s trunk as a product of plastic surgery), astrology replacing astronomy, ritualism replacing reasoning, attempts to invent the r...
17 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 comments
Read more

Ghost with a Cat

It was about midnight when Kuriako stopped his car near the roadside eatery known as thattukada in Kerala. He still had another 27 kilometres to go, according to Google Map. Since Google Map had taken him to nowhere lands many a time, Kuriako didn’t commit himself much to that technology. He would rather rely on wayside shopkeepers. Moreover, he needed a cup of lemon tea. ‘How far is Anakkad from here?’ Kuriako asked the tea-vendor. Anakkad is where his friend Varghese lived. The two friends would be meeting after many years now. Both had taken voluntary retirement five years ago from their tedious and rather absurd clerical jobs in a government industry and hadn’t met each other ever since. Varghese abandoned all connection with human civilisation, which he viewed as savagery of the most brutal sort, and went to live in a forest with only the hill tribe people in the neighbourhood. The tribal folk didn’t bother him at all; they had their own occupations. Varghese bought a plot ...
8 comments
Read more