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Hang Kasab!

Oh, what a circus! Well, the Indian judiciary is a weird creature. It sometimes sprints like a cheetah and at other times crawls like a sloth.

Cases drag on for 20 and 25 years. And then sometimes cases are wrapped up pretty soon. For some reason, rape cases involving 'foreign' tourists/visitors to India are disposed off in 'record' time.

Then, there's Kasab of course. He is to be 'hanged till death' and you have many hangmen volunteering to do the job. I mean, it's not like you have to operate the guillotine or something. Surely, one does not actually have to behead the convict. So, I wonder what is the big deal in pulling a lever.

Anyway, now there's talk about why no hanging still of the guy convicted for the Parliament attacks from 2001. Now that's more like typical Inida. The guy got his initial death sentence back in 2002 and he is still alive while his mercy plea languishes with the government of Delhi. Well, I think some official of the State or Central government should get the death punishment for this kind of senseless delay. All government files should be disposed of within a set period of time. It should not take the President more than four years to still not decide whether the President wishes to be merciful or not towards someone given the death penalty.

And anyway, there's no logic for linking these two cases. The guy from Delhi was merely an 'accomplice' in the Parliament attacks while Kasab was a terrorist who personally killed scores of innocent people.

I am still hopeful that Kasab will die before the end of the year — a rare instance of the Indian judiciary doing an Olympic sprint. It would have been better perhaps if a public spectacle could have been made out of the killing. I mean, it would be sort of ambulance-chasing kind of fun ... but still, fun nevertheless.

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