DONE AND DUSTED
By Neel Anil Panicker
Fifty-five fully preserved skulls, over two dozen legs and arms, three steel boxes full of human hairs, and a refrigerator choc a bloc with oddly shaped 5 litre glass bottles filled to the brim with human blood – no wonder when he was finally caught, and put behind bars, the world was quick to christen him THE BONE COLLECTOR.
“What do we do to such a maniac, a human killer, the bloodiest living scourge known to human society?,” asked the public prosecutor in front of a packed to the gills crowd of curious spectators, all attendees and hopefuls
in the court of the Honourable Chief Justice of
Madras High Court, Justice WR Doraiswamy.
“Simple”, thundered, the man of law, “the accused is sentenced to be stoned to death coming Sunday by a crowd of less than 50 persons, the only condition being all the gathered must be blood relations of all the 50 people bludgeoned to death by the accused.”.
A shell shocked silence prevailed in the second floor Victorian era red sandstone pillared court for a full 90 seconds only to be pierced thereafter by the near apologetic voice of the ashen faced defence attorney.
“But…but, honourable judge, isn’t this too extreme a punishment, and…also that this court nee this country, I mean our country has never been known to meet out such a barbaric form of vigilante justice”.
The man clad in a flowing all black robe surveyed the defence lawyer, his erudite visage now knotted in a huge smirk as if he were inspecting a pest, then looked towards the silver streaked massive crystal chandelier above him and intoned, his handle bar moustache bristling with anger as if addressing a higher power, “at times we need to take radical decisions to ensure the efficacy of the treatment”.
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