Of feudal lords and blood money

The concept of paying blood money, to compensate the victim’s family for accidentally or intentionally extinguishing the life of a person started in the middle ages. It has been called by different names in various parts of the world. The purpose was to ensure that the absence of a breadwinner and a source of livelihood for the victim’s family did not lead to starvation and to ensure that they were economically secure for life. The emotional loss obviously could not be compensated, so no effort was made in that direction.

In earlier times
These fines completely protect the offender (or the kinsfolk thereof) from the vengeance of the injured family. The system was common among the Scandinavian and Teutonic peoples previous to the introduction of Christianity, and a scale of payments, graduated according to the heinousness of the crime, was fixed by laws, which further settled who could exact the blood-money, and who were entitled to share it. Homicide was not the only crime thus expiable: blood money could be exacted for all crimes of violence. Some acts, such as killing someone in a church or while asleep, or within the precincts of the royal palace, were "bot-less"; and the death penalty was inflicted. Such a criminal was outlawed, and could be killed by anyone on sight.

The payment of weregild, the word literally means "man price", was an important legal mechanism in early Northern European societies, such as those of the Vikings, and Anglo-Saxons; the other common form of legal reparation at this time was blood revenge. The payment was typically made to the family or to the clan. If these payments were not made, or refused by the offended party, a blood feud would ensue.

The size of the weregild in cases of murder was largely conditional upon the social rank of the victim. In early Anglo-Saxon Britain, an elaborate tariff was prescribed. A prince, was worth 1500 shillings, a yeoman farmer was worth 100 shillings, a serf was worth between 40 and 80 shillings. Thralls and slaves technically commanded no weregild, but it was commonplace to make a nominal payment in the case of a thrall and the value of the slave in such a case. A shilling was defined as the value of a cow in Kent or elsewhere, a sheep. As the Northern European tribes were a nomadic people, great importance was placed on the survival of women and children, as they were integral to the propagation of the tribe. The killing of both women and children were also dealt with severely, usually bringing on the larger of the fines.

Early Germanic law forms were very specific to differentiate between the wergelds for free people as opposed to bonded servants. Payment of the weregild was gradually replaced with corporal punishment, starting around the 9th century and almost entirely replaced by as late as the 12th century throughout the Holy Roman Empire.

Weregild was also known to the Celts, who called it ericfine in Ireland and galanas in Wales, and to Slavic peoples, who called it vira in Russia and główczyzna in Poland.

Qisas is an Islamic term meaning retaliation, similar to the biblical principle of an eye for an eye. In the case of murder, it means the right of the heirs of a murder victim to demand execution of the murderer. As execution for murder was conceived as the retaliation of the victim's heirs, traditionally the state could carry out the execution with their permission only, and they were free to forgive the murderer, either as an act of charity or in return for compensation. However, the Quran also prescribes that one should not demand retribution but seek compensation called Diyya (plural Diyat). There is no specific amount for Diyat and the fine should not differ based on the gender of the victim, or state of freedom of the victim. However, the Qur'an left open its quantity, nature and other related affairs to the customs and traditions of a society. Today one sees Diyya for women being half that for men. Those who fail to raise the money to pay Diyya are executed. Qisas is enforced today in many countries which follow the Sharia, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan.

In modern times
All over the world the rich have been known to be somewhat arrogant since they seem to have vast quantity of something that the rest of us don’t; Money, Riches, Maal, Moolah or call it what you will. In the more civilized parts of the world this arrogance is reflected in the rich seeking special favours from the state including special tax status. In the developing world, this mindset is reflected in their breaking every rule in the book, rash and drunken driving, at speeds in excess of laid down traffic and speed limits, running over ordinary mortals, be they policemen on duty or pavement dwellers and showing no remorse whatsoever, being one of the prime examples of this mindset.

The sentence in the infamous Sanjeev Nanda BMW hit and run case by a New Delhi court and some comments made by the eminent judge bring to mind the earlier times when the law treated those who could pay, and those who could not, differently. So, even today, as in earlier times, all over the world, most of those executed happen to be poor folk who could not hire top-notch lawyers or pay the penalty while the rich hired the best legal teams, paid and walked free. It matters little whether the incident happens in Mumbai (Alistair Pariera, Salman Khan, Niel Chatterjee and many more) or in the heart of Delhi as in the instant case, they always manage to get away cheaply.

http://blogs.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/archive/2007/10/19/to-poor-to-live.htm

For the judge to say that the sentence was guided by the mitigating circumstance, of the Nandas paying compensation of Rs 1,000,000 to the next of kin of those killed, and Rs 500, 000 to those injured, soon after the date of occurrence of the event, is a travesty of justice. The whole world, seeing their attempts to create a confusion of a truck instead of the BMW car, tamper with evidence, bribe witnesses, strike unholy deals with prosecution lawyer etc believes they did not pay compensation to make the lot of the victims’ families any better; it was their attempt to buy silence.

Image courtesy IBN Live