IT was startling to see prime minister Imran Khan being swept along on the sentiments of an incensed public. Even while recognizing that the motorway gang rape last week has justifiably touched a raw nerve, he should champion systemic change to deal with such crimes, a much more productive course of action rather than adding to charged atmosphere.
However, during a TV interview on Monday, the prime minister called for public hanging of the sexual predators, but in the same breath acknowledged that such punishment was not globally accepted. As the leader of a country that not long ago seen the horror of public executions perpetrated by ferocious militants, he should be particularly aware of the optics of promoting such punishment, albeit only in cases of rape.
Public hangings, though a populist move to placate a majority of the emotional citizens, are neither an immediate nor a long-term solution to any crime, a fact that many well-known criminologists corroborate. Such punishments would only serve to include us among the most brutalized of societies, where the longing for revenge dwarfs the longing for justice. Even the premier’s proposal that sex reprobates be chemically neutered disregards the very pertinent fact that the conviction rate in rape cases, which are already wholly under-reported, is a meager 3%. This is so, because police investigations are faulty and patently compromised and the justice system has little interest in seeing justice done.
As per the law, rape is a non-compoundable crime. The example of several countries is there for us to see: it is the certainty of punishment, not its severity that serves as a deterrent to crime. Only structural and procedural changes are the solution to preventing crimes, particularly gang rape, from happening.
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