The Hindu Business Line : Why do killers kill?

What turns an apparently run-of-the-mill human being into a killer? A basic explanation sometimes offered by sociologists is that the primordial animal instinct rooted in nature "red in tooth and claw" is never too far below the surface in any human being, although the intensity of provocation needed to trigger it may vary from person to person, depending on the extent of his conditioning by social and cultural value systems.

The exact reasons why or how a person brings himself to resort to brutal acts resulting in the death of fellow humans, are yet to be figured out with any degree of finality. There have, no doubt, been writings narrating stories of crime or giving accounts of backgrounds to sensational murders, but definitive scientific studies throwing light on the workings of the mind of a killer are hard to come by.

Experts here and there, mostly in Western countries, have been tinkering with various hypotheses but essentially they approach the phenomenon on the biological and neurological planes.

For instance, Dr Jonathan Pincus, chief of neurology at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Washington and a professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine, in his research paper, "Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill," has assembled a lot of scientific data on the nature and functioning of the frontal lobes of the brain. His opinion, after talking to 150 murderers and interviewing "a charming white-collar professional" who mutilated and murdered as many as 50 women, is that mental illness, neurological damage and child abuse are the three dominant determinants of a killer's make-up.

Of theories there is no dearth. Recently, there was a debate on a prominent TV channel linking non-vegetarianism with the tendency to resort to lethal acts of violence. The point made was that, in the course of putting other living species to death for one's own self-indulgence, one loses respect for human life as well!

However that be, I am not so much concerned here with crime passionel or murders committed for gain, in an unbalanced state of mind, in the heat of the moment, out of vengeance or by mafia. There is no difficulty in understanding the motives for such kinds of killing.

Murderous mindset

But what of the serial killers, hitmen-for-hire and terrorists? One feature common to all of them is that they are prepared to kill total strangers who have caused them no harm. Serial killers, in particular, choose their victims at random and often indulge, for no evident reason, in barbarous acts of disfigurement and dismemberment of the bodies.

Hired killers, too, are totally devoid of any human feeling in carrying out the assignments they take up, in many cases for unbelievably small amounts; they too employ bestial modes of killing without any compunction whatsoever.

As regards terrorists, their murderous mindset is sought to be traced to ideological fanaticism, a burning sense of injustice or inequities of the prevailing social or economic order. The willingness of young jehadis to die for their beliefs is attributed to their being allured by the thought of the luxurious rewards that will come their way in Heaven.

Whatever the underlying psychological causation, don't the killers ever put themselves in the place of their victims and their near and dear ones, and try to understand the magnitude of the pain and suffering they cause?

Along with enforcing the punitive side of the law, the Central and State Governments should institute an arrangement for an intensive dialogue between experts and various types of killers taken in custody to arrive at a scientific explanation for their behaviour.

B.S.RAGHAVAN