The Hindu Business Line : Killers for hire

SANKARARAMAN, manager of a Kancheepuram temple, Aladi Aruna, former DMK Minister, Paritala Ravi, MLA of Telugu Desam are but a few of the recent victims of killer gangs who had been hired by their enemies to liquidate them.

The members of these gangs have no enmity or grievance, no vengeance to wreak, against the persons whom they set out to kill.

In fact, in most cases, they have not even previously set their eyes on the victims whose addresses may have to be provided to locate them. Indeed, they may even have to be identified for the convenience of the killers by those who hire them.

The killers are ready to take the lives of persons who are not known to them and have done them no wrong purely for the sake of the amounts they receive for committing the murder.

With money as their sole motive, they are deadened to feelings of pity and pain, to the utter devastation they cause to families and children of the victims and impervious to consequences.

So much so that they have no qualm or compunction in resorting to the cruellest and goriest modes of killing.

Even wild beasts have their code of behaviour, but not these bloody monsters in human form. And killing for hire is threatening to become a flourishing industry.

Try as I might, I could not come across any work by psychologists and psychiatrists in India or abroad plumbing the innermost recesses of the minds of hired killers.

Can it be that they totally lack the empathy to imagine how they would feel if the kind of heinous deeds they indulge in are perpetrated on themselves or their own loved ones?

Does the thought of their being captured and hanged not ever enter their mind? Is it that having taken to wielding knife and gun at others' behest, sometimes for paltry sums, they are willing to face the risks or even perish in the pursuit of their deadly trade?

Or is it that they are simply mindless and incapable of thinking beyond the immediate?

I think an effort should be made to unravel the mysteries of such depraved minds.

That means that in addition to merely letting the law take its course after capturing them, they should be put through intense psychiatric examination to find out their background and the dark forces deep within their psyche that drive them to embark upon such a fiendish course.

B. S. Raghavan

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