Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani is among the most respected and notable businessmen in Zambia and Africa. Recently, Dr. Rajan Mahtani showed his support towards the quest of Zambian President towards abolishing death penalty. While celebrating Africa Day, President of Zambia Hakainde Hichilema announced that he was considering abolishment of death penalty across the nation. While some parties and individuals have opposed this initiative, majority of the parties, individuals and other personalities have expressed their support towards this initiative.
Dr. Rajan Mahtani is one of the supporters of this announcement. Dr. Rajan Mahtani founded the Prison Fellowship Zambia several years ago and is presently at the Chairman position in this organization. Prison Fellowship Zambia (PFZ) is a pioneer organization that works towards providing transparent critical justice and welfare opportunities for inmates, ex-inmates as well as their families in Zambia. Dr. Mahtani’s organization also works towards establishing effective and fair criminal justice system and procedures as well as ensuring that the prisoners are allowed their fundamental rights as well as dignity during their stay in the prison as well as afterwards. Prison Fellowship was founded by Dr. Mahtani more than 37 years ago and has become one of the premier outreach organizations working towards the welfare and development of inmates across Zambian prisons.
Even through there are various people opposing this decisions, Dr. Mahtani has argued that capital punishment or killing of the convicts will not solve underlying problems. According to Dr. Mahtani, a person given death row is already living the punishment on a daily basis as the prisoner will never know when it will be their last day on this earth. There are around 386 death row inmates in Zambia at the moment and around 30 of them are women. Dr. Rajan Mahtani also argued that there are a number of inmates who have transformed themselves by returning to the god’s penance and there is still hope for them to change their lives for the better.
The article on Dr. Rajan Mahtani was recently published at the ‘Mast Newspaper’.