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A review by ankita_g
The Punished: Stories of Death-Row Prisoners in India by Jahnavi Misra
3.0
'the Punished' has 18 'stories' of death row inmates in India, and each story tries to remind us that people who are serving death sentences in prisons across the country, no matter how bad their crimes are, are humans too. Death sentence in India is supposed to be conferred only in 'rarest of rare cases' - a vague threshold that, as research by a credible organisation like Project 39A (on whose work this book is also based) suggest, is arbitrarily applied in most cases, especially when the accused is from an economically disadvantaged background. Through the stories of the death-row convicts covered, the author tries to highlight a range of issues - flaws in our legal system, police brutality, mental illnesses, poverty - but doesn't quite succeed in establishing any of those very convincingly, in my opinion. The stories give you crumbs, but nothing substantial to "chew" on.
Each account is extremely short and doesn't properly delve into the mind, motivation and/or circumstances that led to the accused committing (or being framed for committing, as some allege) the heinous crimes they have been sentenced to death for, nor do they delve into why a police officer, lawyer or/and judge acted in a (supposedly) biased manner. I think the author could have written more about the latter because conferring a death sentence, the strictest punishment in the legal system, to someone can't entirely be based on prejudice, especially when judges are supposed to be highly educated and qualified. If the point was to show incompetence of the judiciary, the claim(s) could have been backed by more substantial research or reasoning.
It requires more than a surface-level treatment of an important and contentious topic like capital punishment, to make a reader fully understand how the law or the system is failing the common people, especially the poor. Also, I didn't quite like the stylistic choice of writing some of these accounts like short stories with made-up 'dialogues'; it subconsciously made me question the authenticity of the account(s).
However, I do think this book is important because if you aren't very familiar with the Indian legal system, it'll atleast make you question the practice of conferring the death penalty, and think about whether it is indeed an "appropriate" punishment for any crime, and if death row convicts are really beyond redemption - which is one the core objectives of the book.
Each account is extremely short and doesn't properly delve into the mind, motivation and/or circumstances that led to the accused committing (or being framed for committing, as some allege) the heinous crimes they have been sentenced to death for, nor do they delve into why a police officer, lawyer or/and judge acted in a (supposedly) biased manner. I think the author could have written more about the latter because conferring a death sentence, the strictest punishment in the legal system, to someone can't entirely be based on prejudice, especially when judges are supposed to be highly educated and qualified. If the point was to show incompetence of the judiciary, the claim(s) could have been backed by more substantial research or reasoning.
It requires more than a surface-level treatment of an important and contentious topic like capital punishment, to make a reader fully understand how the law or the system is failing the common people, especially the poor. Also, I didn't quite like the stylistic choice of writing some of these accounts like short stories with made-up 'dialogues'; it subconsciously made me question the authenticity of the account(s).
However, I do think this book is important because if you aren't very familiar with the Indian legal system, it'll atleast make you question the practice of conferring the death penalty, and think about whether it is indeed an "appropriate" punishment for any crime, and if death row convicts are really beyond redemption - which is one the core objectives of the book.