Friend of Dicks?
Our note last week on the proposal of the Conservative MP, Mr Terry Dicks, that rapists be castrated was too *brief to allow mention of the Supreme Court judge in India who came up with a similarly brilliant idea. This was Justice Krishna Iyer, a celebrated left-wing wind- bag and devotee of Maharishi `Mia Farrow' Mahesh Yogi who set out his ideas in the majority judgment in Rajendra Prasad vs State of U. P. (AIR S.C. 1979 p.916). While accepting that in Indian law death was the legitimate penalty for 'anti-social activi- ties', Justice Iyer maintained that Prasad, who had killed only his uncle and two cousins, was merely involved in a family feud, and that since he wasn't an `habittial killer', he didn't deserve the noose. 'A course of anti-aphrodisiac treatment or willing castration is a better recipe for this hypersexed human than outright death sentence' (para 104), Justice Iyer said. Fortunately, the rest of the Indian judici- ary did not take a kind view of this attempt to legalise mutilation. Rajendra Prasad was severly qualified in Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab. Soon after Justice Iyer retired. Let us hope that whatever political differ- ences exist between Mr Dicks and the judge, these can now be forgotten in the greater, nobler cause of castration.
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