A Worse Punishment
“Well, what’s the use of mere apologizing and condemning. The violator should be punished by seeing the same, if the same fate befalls to his loved ones before his very eyes.” said a woman after watching the victim’s shocking, inhuman experience before the Human Rights Committee as shown on TV mid-May 1998. Perhaps, this is a worse punishment than having him flogged severely in public.
For many days, her words preoccupied my thoughts said Pak Arif. And I dreamed I was in the court of the just and wise Judge Bao with the violator and the woman accuser who wanted the violator to be punished in the same way as what he did to his victims. Contrary to his wont, Judge Bao granted the suit. “Take his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his mother before the court and have the executioners ready.” he ordered to the officials of the court. The court was dumbfounded, silent.
As in the tale of Draupadi* who was dishonored by Dursasana* and his brothers in front of her husband, aunts, uncles, grand sires and royal visitors, they also were stripped off, of their clothes.
They kneeled in fear and sobbed: “Please have mercy on us, help, save us Judge Bao. Oh, God. What have we done that we deserve such a cruel punishment?”
Seeing such a fate befall to women as she herself is, without any wrong, so helpless, so pitiful, she forgot her charge. “Stoooop! Judge Bao. Don’t continue this torture, insult, affront, outrage. They are innocent! Thousand years of prison wouldn’t be enough to wash away these wrongs, their suffering or dry their tears.!” So did she cry aloud and I awoke, breathing freely.
How lucky that it was just a dream, said Pak Arif. Whoever wants to be an executioner of helpless women … “more over, what’s wrong with them? - Except he, who has lost or traded his sense of humanity.” Si Upik interrupted.
*From the Mahabharata
From Sinar Pagi, August 8, 1998
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