What would you choose as your last meal in this life?
It’s a question that has been on my mind lately, not just because of the coronavirus pandemic, but also the scheduled hanging of the four remaining convicts in the December 2012 Delhi gang rape case at 5.30 am Friday. This may not be the most obvious question when you think of the rapists. So many Indians want to see them dead, and just in the last few weeks, they must already have gone through a hundred deaths. No matter which side of the aisle you are on death penalty, there is no question that their hanging will be a huge emotional moment for all of India tomorrow – not just for the victim’s family and the rapists and their families, but also for scores of rape victims and survivors, and the December 2012 protesters at India Gate.
Over the past few months, Indians have watched — some impatient, some enraged, some cynical and dismissive and some just plain exhausted — the dizzying whirl of review petitions, curative pleas, mercy pleas, reviews of mercy pleas, death warrants, suspension of death warrants and even appeals in the International Court of Justice.
But legalities aside, as the rapists are hanged tomorrow, there will still be some emotional rituals that are likely to be followed.
Also read: Days before hanging, 16 December rapists have ‘lost appetite, are watching Bollywood films’
The last meal
Photographer Henry Hargreaves’ series on the last meals of death row inmates in the US provides a strangely intimate, oddly sweet look at the last-meal choices of prisoners and what that says about them – from a former KFC manager ordering a bucket of his brand’s fried chicken to a man ordering a single olive (with the pit in it – he hoped an olive tree would sprout from his grave as a peace symbol).
In India, while there’s no last-meal ritual stipulated in the prison rules, jailers do reportedly allow for a condemned prisoner’s final meal to be a little special. Food is practically every Indian’s way of showing that they care, and jailers as well as convicted criminals are only human. So if Ajmal Kasab wanted his last meal to be a solitary tomato, his wish was, it was reported, granted. He was condemned to the gallows; surely the state could afford to give him a big, red, juicy tomato.
Also read: 16 December gang rape and murder convicts to now hang at 5.30 am on 20 March
Riding an emotional roller coaster
This is not a plea for sympathy or an argument against or for death penalty. But one can only imagine the desperate fear these convicts must have felt, and the equally desperate hope that they have clung to. Just as the victim’s mother, Asha Devi, has.
Whether you call it justice or bloodlust, if you were faced with imminent death, it is natural to try every trick in the book to delay it, to buy yourself more time – even in prison.
The district court of Aurangabad in Bihar is also seized of a divorce petition filed by the wife of one of the convicts, who said that while she believes her husband is innocent, she doesn’t want to live with the tag of being a rapist’s widow. Many speculate that this is yet another tactic employed by the convicts’ lawyer to delay the execution. At Delhi’s Patiala House Court on Thursday, a physical altercation took place between the convict’s family and a group of people supporting the death penalty, after which the convict’s wife started hitting herself with slippers, saying someone should kill her because “I don’t want to live”. There is no denying that the past few months have been an emotional hell for everyone involved in this case.
High drama outside Patiala House Court as the wife of one of the Nirbhaya convicts, Akshay, beats herself in public ahead of the order on the death warrant. She has also moved the local Court in Bihar asking for divorce. The 4 convicts are scheduled to be hanged tomorrow at 5:30. pic.twitter.com/VIoOdVTrLi
— Nalini 🌼 (@nalinisharma_) March 19, 2020
Legal battles aside, the convicts’ families are and will forever be branded and defined by a crime they did not commit. They have even approached President Ram Nath Kovind with a common euthanasia plea for themselves. Even if they know what their son did was monstrous, this couldn’t have been easy for them.
On the other hand, the victim’s mother, Asha Devi, has spent the last seven years battling for this moment, but when the hanging finally does happen, will it bring her the closure she has so desperately sought? She may fear the convicts will find a new loophole to exploit. And she, too, has been defined by the fact that her daughter was raped and murdered.
Also read: Dread, betrayal, poverty, hope: Stories of forgotten families of 16 Dec gang rape convicts
Convicts’ final moments
And finally, how the convicts spend their last day is something that will cross everyone’s mind. Remorse, praying for forgiveness, self-pity, anger, resignation – their last conversations and thoughts must be shaped by at least some of these emotions.
In fact, leave aside these convicts – what would you want to do if you knew you were to be executed tomorrow? Think of the books you regret never having read, the movies you might like to watch again, the song you would play on loop. That one person you would like to meet for the last time and what you might say to them.
And yes, the choice of that last meal.
Views are personal.
How many years will you guys live…40, 60, 80, 96 and hardly in one or two cases 120…Did you read or see anyone alive beyond the last mentioned year? Everyone will die one day, even I will die but the one who gives life or death is God. Don’t. look at the convicts… but look at their poor poverty stricken families. Rich people and politicians are bailed out easily…but did you see any rich person being hanged in India?
Not yet. Only the poor and underprivileged convicts got hung while the rich and powerful ones escaped the noose readily. A glaring recent example is the Unnao rape case in which the father of the victim was ‘murdered’ besides killing her two aunties also.
They have been rightly punished for what they did. May God rest their soul in peace and their families to bear this great pain.
Print started supporting criminals that too accused of rape, please reveal list of ngos supporting the criminals nee murderers, can poor people afford SC lawyers? Need to know the NGOs supporting this depraved acts of rapists in the name of left liberals.
For your knowledge… The Indian penal system provides advocates.. and they provide senior advocates for cases where death penalty is possible. It’s not NGOs.. but the judicial system of the country.. that’s how it works..
Oh my god…this senseless cabal has to stop, defending the indefensible.
People including author are the worst kind who gloss over the heinous crime, the manner in which committed, and the grotesque body left.
This barbaric act if left unpunished all in the name of saving 4 lives so the children don’t lose parents reels or moral bankruptcies, a practice akin to receiving blood money after murder has been committed.
Sorry.. it’s the punishment for the brutal crime which has been done, let’s just look at it that way rather complicating with sense less over analysis.
Gulnarji,
Life is indeed precious. I too, have had similar thoughts.
But, and this is the big “but”, we, as a nation and a people, need closure. It will cost much more than 4 lives. Four families, nay 4 communities, will carry the burden even after the death of these four rapists.
Yes. Rapists. And we need closure.
I have hardened my heart to these four. I am a father, a husband and a son. My first born is the light of my life – my daughter.
I will not grieve these four. But I will not rejoice either.
all that was missing in the article was – a request to Nirbhaya’s mother to cook the last meal for the convicts
When a society feels more sorry for the offender than for the victim, know that it will be overrun by a more aggressive society.
I doubt the rapists deserve any sympathy. No use their getting emotional now as they weren’t so on 16th Dec when they did what they did.
There is no replay in life. You get one chance and that is it.
The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the brutal killing of Rev Graham Staines and his two children come to mind. Crime cannot be compared, but were these not far more brutal and well planned or pre-meditated, as compared to the spontaneity of the present case.? The victims widows forgave them. Was not this a greater lesson to humanity than the present case where a huge section of society is baying for the blood of four men from poor families.? Had they been rich they may have got away with a lighter sentence. Much to think about for those crying revenge.
“the victims widows” – oh, you have accidentally revealed your Leftist mindset – for you, the 4 monsters are the victims and not Nirbhaya.
The writer has used the correct term – blood lust. It doesn’t solve any problem. It only makes us more inhuman.
“It doesn’t solve any problem” – You moron, hanging is not for solving any problem. It is simply justice delivered.
At last they will be hanged. What about other ppl who r on death row ? Why are they not hanged ? Total politics even in hanging ! What a disgusting country !
What is the politics in this hanging? They raped and murdered a girl. SC gave them hanging. The jail is executing the order. Where is the politics in it? Don’t hide your Left/liberal love for such monsters in such high-sounding words.
We are proud of our Mother India. Very proud.
If you don’t like it, leave.
Go. Find your peace somewhere else.
May your days be blessed.
Absolutely right u are.
The law is not same for all here.
I HAD TO ASK: AFTER THAT, WHAT?
It is not about politics or precedents; nor is it about legalities and formalities; it is not about courts and governments; nor is it about incomplete mercy petitions and hurried rejections; it is far above and beyond all these; it is about life and death.
I am a woman, a daughter and a mother. I have to make this self-declaration, to pre-empt possible comments of ‘Are you not a woman?’ Call me inhuman, unjust, heartless, callous, anti- feminist, anti- national, or what you will. I had to express these thoughts that have pervaded, and are forcefully and completely occupying my mind now. If I didn’t give vent to these thoughts and feelings, I would never be able to ever forgive myself. Nothing may come of it, still, I have to say. I also know I will receive curses, threats and abuses for writing this. But write I have to, in obedience to my own conscience, which is my Commander.
I cried for Nirbhaya that fateful, fatal December night. I couldn’t believe that any human being could do what these six men did. I prayed earnestly for her recovery. I took part in midnight marches and in candle light vigils. I grieved with her parents. I became part of the collective national conscience that bayed for the blood of the rapists.
But now, when the convicts have been sentenced to death, and stand on the verge of their life, hanging on to dear life, dying and hanging many times before the real hanging, desperately trying all possible means to save themselves, (not going on jolly rides, as the Solicitor General would mock at their attempts), clutching at all bits of straw that float their way, and are being spat at by the whole nation, an insuppressible restlessness overpowers me; a question that refuses to be silenced, gnaws my mind, “ Are we taking the right step, doing the right thing, by hanging the convicts, and taking their life”. No, I am not appealing for forgiveness; the men cannot be forgiven, for, what they did was bestial, the most heinous of heinous crimes. No girl or her family can forgive them.
But killing the men in cold blood, is that the answer? They are hanged at 6 AM one morning, there is a deadly silence before, during, and after the hanging, that you can hear a kerchief drop. Four bodies fall thud to the ground, and are handed over to the parents who are dead long ago. For the others, life goes on as usual.
What after that? What purpose is this supposed act of justice, going to serve? The sense of victory that the country would experience and exhilarate about, will that be a lasting one? What if the pleading eyes of the men from behind their black hoods, haunt us for the rest of our lives? What if their screams for clemency keep piercing our hearts for ever? What if at some future time in our lives, for some reason or the other, we regret their hanging, and we wish their lives had been spared?
If their lives are spared, at least four sets of parents would still have their children alive;
And, life is precious.
Mrs. Gulnar Raheem Khan
11/02/2020
I am not opposing the hanging of these convicts. I’ve been waiting for these 4 merciless men to be hanged soon and I pray that this time this does really happen.
On a side note, I have a sound advice for you. Be tolerant of other people’s point of view. You do not have to use “Leftist/Liberal” as an abuse for everyone who does not agree with what you stand for. I read all of your comments and they reflect that you’re filled with a lot of hatred. I don’t know where that hatred is coming from, but I believe that you should work on being a more empathetic, tolerant and kinder person. All the best.
Calm down and please desist from giving unsolicited advice to others. Everyone is entitled to opinions even if it borders on hate as long as it doesn’t grievously harm others. Meanwhile make sure you reply to the person you wish to address else it makes no sense. Apologies for not following my own advice and giving you unsolicited advice.
On the other hand not hanging the criminals could also be a cause for regret if they escape and cause harm to others, possibly even to you or your family and friends. Even if one feels that hanging doesn’t solve the problem, there is always the possibility that the punishment will deter others. Nobody knows. What is definitely true is that none of those hanged can repeat the crime. Also not sure if it is a good idea for non-criminal tax payers to pay for the upkeep of those who have committed heinous crimes.