Sorry for hurting you, I was drunk

By Sunanda Ranjan
PUBLISHED: 21:07 GMT, 23 December 2012

"What happened to you, my love?" the doting hubby asked, noting his wife's missing front tooth.
"You don't remember," his resigned wife sighed.
"Remember what?"
"That you punched me square in the face when I refused sex last night," she cried.
"Aww honey," he said wrapping her in his arms. "Don't hold it against me. You do realise I was drunk right?"
 

The court's verdict was clearly out of touch with the mood of the country

When the Supreme Court recently commuted a rapist-murderer's death sentence to life imprisonment on the groundS that the poor fellow was too drunk at the time of the crime to have any idea about the consequences of his actions, it gave a licence to all the irresponsible drinkers of this world to make light of their misdemeanours while under the influence as an uncontrollable repercussion of alcohol intake.
Of course, it would be impossible to hang every rapist in the country - some reports say two women are raped in India every hour.
With the rising incidence of gang-rape, well, it would be impossible to put a figure on the number of perpetrators.
But couldn't the judge come up with a better justification for commuting the accused's death sentence? Are we a society that is ready to promote irresponsible drinking that endangers the lives of the responsible people?
The accused in the case mentioned ruthlessly beat up his victims and must have known from their screams that he was doing something wrong; was it his drunken stupor that kept him from registering the protests of the woman he raped?
He obviously had enough sense to slit the throat of his older victim and clean himself before escaping.
But the judge would of course contend that all these arguments stand defeated by the whiff of alcohol on the shirt of the accused. Poor fellow.