Yesterday (9^th Feb. 2013) the terrorist Afzal Guru was executed in New Delhi as a punishment for his misdeeds.

The capital punishment is the highest punishment which can be awarded to any person. The underlying philosophy, I believe, is that one bad person is eliminated from this world in order to save the rest of the world from the sufferings he may induce. There is also the principle of natural justice here. The survivors of killed persons get a sense of satisfaction that the culprit got the deserved death.

My question is whether we really punish the criminal, Afzal in the present case? He was hanged and the death was indeed instantaneous and more importantly painless. One way of looking at death is that it heralds the end of all sufferings. Thus any criminal who is sentenced to life imprisonment is made to suffer much more in comparison to one who is executed.
 
There has been lot of debate all over the world about capital punishment from humanitarian point of view.  Perhaps no country has totally abolished the death penalty. I feel that there is need for debate from the viewpoint of making the criminal pay through long suffering and regretting his past actions.