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Life And Death Of An Anti-impalement Activist

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The man took his place standing beside the girl, facing her backside, a many-tailed, knotted leather whip in his hand.

"Begin," he said, and immediately, his partner began counting.

"One, two, three, four,"

CRACK!! The whip came down hard on the girl's flanks, leaving a red-pink trail in her flesh. She screamed, and already the counting had resumed: "One, two..."

She lifted her bottom from her heels and pressed her chest to the ground, cocking back her hips and arching her back so that her vulva came clearly into view.

"Three, four..."

But as the whoosh of the whip came behind her, she groaned with indecision, her feet kicking in distress, and just as it approached, she lost her nerve, squeezing her buttocks together and tucking her hips under her to protect herself. That one hadn't counted either.

"...two, three, four"

SLAP!! And the scream.

"...two, three, four"

CRACK!! She still had thirty lashes to go.

Finally, on the fifth stroke, she managed to hold her position of utmost vulnerability long enough to take the whip's full burning fury squarely on her exposed sex. Her squeal quickly turned to a guttural roar as she collapsed onto her side, curled up in a ball. She took the next three strokes in this position. Twenty-nine to go.

It had been years since Anjali had seen this type of punishment, and she was less numb to it than she had expected to be. The camera image shook.

"...two, three..."

The girl returned to all-fours, spread her legs and cocked her hips back as far as she could, once more presenting her naked vulva for the lash.

SLAP!! It caught her squarely, and again she collapsed. After this, she managed to hold a rhythm, taking one lash to her private parts, then curling up and taking two lashes on her back or thighs, then getting up to take another lash on her sex.

By the twentieth counted stroke, she needed the time of three or four lashes to her back and thighs before she could summon the strength to present her womanhood again, and she lay there taking almost a dozen lashes after the twenty-eighth. But once she managed to get into position for the twenty-ninth, she took it without collapsing, only thrusting herself forward with a shriek and clenching her buttocks. By the count of four, she was back with her legs spread, her intimate parts bared to the lash.

CRACK!! It was especially hard, and she screamed even louder and longer, collapsing into a ball to sob.

Anjali stopped recording, unblinking eyes dry as her cotton mouth.
 
Soon Anjali felt Sanjeev's arm around her shoulders. It was shaking too. She holstered her phone.

"Are y-" Sanjeev's voice caught in his dry throat, and he had to swallow before trying again: "Are you ok?"

"I'm fine," she said briefly, then took a deep breath and looked around her. Several of the students were in tears. Leaving Sanjeev, she went to comfort them.

Over the next two months, the group kept moving from village to village, listening for news of an impaling, though after witnessing the girl's beating, the better part of them hoped they would not come across one. Three of the villages had recently had an impaling before they arrived, and the woman's naked corpse still slumped on the stake in the village center. Their bodies rested on short wooden saddles in their crotch, and their arms were bound behind them. The stake itself was stained dark red and black with blood from between their legs, but otherwise, their pale, lifeless bodies appeared undamaged. As sickening as the sight was, Anjali was relieved. This would show that impalement was a reality, without having to witness the full horror of the ordeal. They all took photos and brief videos for documentation.

When the summer was over, the group returned to Chakrabesh. And prepared to post the images and videos they had taken on Anjali's website. They had documented three impalements in less than three months, in just one of the 18 provinces, which felt like a victory. They had decided to pixelate the victims' faces to protect their identities, but they were in disagreement over whether to also censor some of the women's body parts.

"We are doing this to show the reality," Anjali said, as they all crowded in her apartment with laptops.

"I know..." said one of the girls, "but it seems like they'll get the idea either way, won't they?"

"What about the castration?" asked another. "If you blur that out you really lose the impact."

"I don't think we want to upload the castration," said Anjali. "I already feel like we're starting to lose focus by showing the flogging. The castration really doesn't fit."

"Anjali..." said Sanjeev, tentatively, reaching over to touch her ankle, "I really don't think we should post these uncensored." His face was a complicated brew of disgust, anxiety, and distress at his inability to explain further without straying far from his comfort zone.

"Why not?"

"It's just... the way men would see this... I just... I really STRONGLY urge you to edit them."

Silence.

"Alright," Anjali agreed, "but be subtle about it, ok? Little blurs, that's all."

Sanjeev looked relieved.

"So..." began one of the girls, uncomfortably, "Like... boobs too, or...?"

"No, leave those," said Anjali. Then she looked at Sanjeev, who would content himself with what he could get.

As it turned out, they needn't have bothered making such decisions. Within a week of their publication on Anjali's website, with passionate pleas to end the practice of impalement, the images and videos also surfaced on several popular pornography sites, completely uncensored. Someone had managed to edit the files and undo the blurs.

It was discouraging enough that the summer's work was being used for base entertainment; it was worse that a general election was called shortly thereafter, and the opposing parties bantered, not about whether to outlaw impalement, but whether Anjali Batra was a fraud. Mr. Patel, the incumbent Prime Minister with whom Anjali had spoken months before, was reluctant to commit:

"Certainly these are disturbing images," he said in an interview, "and this is the kind of thing we don't want to see happening in Rajistan. Our party has always stood for humanitarian goals, so I think regardless of whether Ms. Batra is legitimate or whether these images are legitimate, our party is the party fighting for a better life for all Rajistanis - whether you live in the cities or in the provinces. That's what we're all about."

Mr. Patel's opponent, the opposition leader Mr. Varesh, was less accommodating:

"This is what our country has come to!" he said in a similar interview, "This girl stages these atrocious situations for a porn company - and this is not the kind of entertainment we should be consuming if we want a healthy country, by the way - and the party in power jumps on this as a political weapon! Patel is trying to tell voters this is legitimate, and scare them into voting for him! And at the end of the day, IT'S. JUST. PORN! I know this is a pretty low bar, but I think Rajistan should look for a prime minister who doesn't use the porn industry to get reelected. Is that too much to ask!?"

"Well," Anjali told Sanjeev, shutting off the TV, "you were right about censoring." Sanjeev felt more gratified than he let on. They sat there on opposite sides of her couch for several moments. "We have to make this real." Anjali said, finally.

"They don't want it to be real," said Sanjeev, wrinkling his short nose and pushing up his glasses. "They make their own reality." It felt profound, and he thought Anjali must be taking it in in the silence that followed. But she hadn't really listened. He said things like that often. She never listened.

"I'm going back," she finally said.

"Next summer?"

"No. Now."

"Why?"

"With a gun."
 
I really like where you're going with this latest post, Juan. You're building the tension quite effectively. I think the porn angle is great, because, yeah, an ambitious and ruthless politician would come with the Big Lie to cover blatant injustice in his society and to accuse the whistle blowers of creating fake news. As far as the emasculation goes, though, personally, I think it would have been more to the point if the man had been of a higher caste, and seduced or perhaps even raped the young woman. Being a man, he would get off with some minor punishment, maybe just a fine or something. That way, she's being punished for being a victim, while the victimizer gets a slap on the wrist. Such inequity would increase Anjali's and her students' sense of outrage about village justice. I mean, it's one thing to whip or impale a woman, quite another to cut a dude's junk off. That's just mean. Btw, just as a minor technical detail, the man wasn't castrated, he was emasculated.
 
Jon Smithie said:
I really like where you're going with this latest post, Juan. You're building the tension quite effectively. I think the porn angle is great, because, yeah, an ambitious and ruthless politician would come with the Big Lie to cover blatant injustice in his society and to accuse the whistle blowers of creating fake news. As far as the emasculation goes, though, personally, I think it would have been more to the point if the man had been of a higher caste, and seduced or perhaps even raped the young woman. Being a man, he would get off with some minor punishment, maybe just a fine or something. That way, she's being punished for being a victim, while the victimizer gets a slap on the wrist. Such inequity would increase Anjali's and her students' sense of outrage about village justice. I mean, it's one thing to whip or impale a woman, quite another to cut a dude's junk off. That's just mean. Btw, just as a minor technical detail, the man wasn't castrated, he was emasculated.
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Thanks, Jon. I appreciate you giving thoughtful feedback!!

I actually had the guy be of lower caste so that I could contrast it later with a near-identical situation where the guy is of higher caste. Not that it will necessarily turn out better just because I had a reason, but there it is. :)

I feel like that episode with all the whipping and emasculation (thanks!) got a little off-track. Lost my focus and did a pussy whipping because I just wanted to do one. I'll try to stay more focussed. The thrust of the story really is the politics and corruption.

Thanks again for reading, and for giving feedback! New episodes coming soon!
 
Hi everybody - Just wanted to gauge interest if I were to continue this story... As I've said before, I don't have the time to do it the way I'd like to, but I do think of it every once in a while, and if others would enjoy it even in a first-draft, rushed, bare-bones form, I might try to write some more... But if not, no prob. :) I'll write something else - something shorter. I'll wait and see how much feedback I get here...
 
Juan1234 said:
Hi everybody - Just wanted to gauge interest if I were to continue this story... As I've said before, I don't have the time to do it the way I'd like to, but I do think of it every once in a while, and if others would enjoy it even in a first-draft, rushed, bare-bones form, I might try to write some more... But if not, no prob. :) I'll write something else - something shorter. I'll wait and see how much feedback I get here...
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I meant to mention this story on your latest thread, "Fragments," and ask you whatever happened to it. I'm glad you're considering taking another stab at this (see what I did there?) Although I'm not a huge fan of impalement--too bloody and final for my taste, (or maybe I should say too bloody final), the idea of this lovely young would-be social reformer falling afoul of an unjust, barbaric law is right up my alley.
 
Juan1234 said:
Hi everybody - Just wanted to gauge interest if I were to continue this story... As I've said before, I don't have the time to do it the way I'd like to, but I do think of it every once in a while, and if others would enjoy it even in a first-draft, rushed, bare-bones form, I might try to write some more... But if not, no prob. :) I'll write something else - something shorter. I'll wait and see how much feedback I get here...
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Strongly encourage you to continue. I have my popcorn ready and waiting :icon_popcorn:
 
Two weeks later, Anjali and Sanjeev were back in the provinces - this time Lameshri Province, to the north of Dumbala. Their exploits over the summer had caused quite a stir, and they were more likely to be recognized if they had returned to Dumbala. Sanjeev thought it was a grand gesture of his loyalty to be missing classes to accompany Anjali. For her part, Anjali was glad for the company, but far more focussed on the task at hand.
"We have to caatch them in the act," she told Sanjeev. For the first week, they wandered as they had done in Dumbala, listening for talk of impalings. At the end of the week, Anjali decided they would select one village and stay there until they could witness an impaling. Again they posed as sociologists, though this time Anjali gave out that her name was Pooja Patel, because her real name was likely to be recognized after the media coverage of the summer.
Ten days later, it happened. Anjali was helping their host prepare the mid-day meal when she heard yelling outside. She and the other woman both strode out to see what was happening. Much of the village, it seemed, was crowded around one hut, where a middle-aged man lay dazed, a huge red welt on the side of his head.
"Who did this?" the village elders asked him. The man looked confused, gazing from face to face. Then, suddenly a realization came over his face, his eyes sharpened, and his brow knit.
"My wife," he said. "My wife hit me!"
Instantly, one of the elders nodded to a group of three or for strong young men, who darted out into the jungle around the village to find the offending woman.
After questioning the man's sons and daughters, it became clear that early that morning, the man's wife had displeased him in some way. He had therefore ordered her to take off her clothes so that he could whip her. She refused, and when he flew at her in a rage to strip her himself, she had struck him in the head with a fire poker, knocking him unconscious. Her only option then was to escape the village, so she had fled. Now the search party of young men were chasing her.

Anjali's heart beat hard that afternoon. In truth she was miserable, and did not know whether she hoped they would find the woman and bring her back to impale her, or if she hoped the woman would escape. On one hand, of course she hoped the poor woman would find freedom from injustice. On the other hand, she knew that hundreds of other women and girls might be saved if she could catch this woman's death on video, as dirty as it felt.

Late that afternoon, the search party returned, tugging and shoving the woman among them, her hands bound behind her. Anjali's heart skipped a beat when she saw her. She was young. Anjali knew she whould not look her in the face, but she could not help it when the woman looked directly at her, her scared eyes almost blank.

When the chief had pronounced the sentence, the village gathered around the village center to watch. The condemned woman began to weep as they set a crude, wooden frame down, then brought out a long, blunt impaling stake, stained with the blood of previous victims. She was brought to the fram and stripped naked, bringing fresh tears. Sanjeev started to pull his phone from his pocket, but Anjali put her hand on his, stropping him. Moments later, a village elder approached them. "No pictures!" he said severely.

"Yeah, I don't think we even really want to see this," said Anjali. "Let's go, Sanjeev." As the woman was bound to the frame, Anjali and Sanjeev walked away and into the forest, Sanjeev wide-eyed with confusion, but fortunately silent.

As soon as they were among the trees on the edge of the village, Anjali ordered Sanjeev to start recording. From behind a tree, they still had a good view of the proceedings. They were almost finished tying the naked woman to the frame, on her knees and elbows, hips held high by a cross beam beneath them, thighs spread a little, head low between her forearms. "You're getting this, right?" Anjali whispered. Sanjeev nodded.
Next, an old man approached the woman's naked bottom with a knife and sliced quickly between her anus and vagina. She yelped through her tears, and the man applied a handful of leaves and herbs to the cut, rubbing her vigorously with the mixture for nearly a minute. "That slows the bleeding," Anjali whispered. Sanjeev was too transfixed and trembling to respond.
Next, the stake. Two men lifted it and directed its blunt tip to the new cut between the woman's buttocks. When they were satisfied with the position, the slowly began pushing the stake into her.
Then - BANG! There was a gunshot, and the naked woman's head slumped, suddenly full of blood. The villagers screamed and started running. Sanjeev looked at Anjali to see her with a smoking handgun. His already open mouth gaped further.
"Let's go," she said.
 
Juan1234 said:
. On one hand, of course she hoped the poor woman would find freedom from injustice. On the other hand, she knew that hundreds of other women and girls might be saved if she could catch this woman's death on video, as dirty as it felt.
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A moral dilemma there ...

Cliff hanger at the end ...

Next episode please!
 
Juan1234 said:
Anjali Batra's mother had been convicted of murder and executed by impaling. Of course her father had not let her watch the execution, but from that day, Anjali had devoted her life to fighting this barbarous punishment. When, months later, new evidence proved her mother had been innocent, it only further fueled her passion for her cause.

In Rajistan, impaling was a traditional punishment for female criminals, and though by the late 20th century no self-respecting judge in the metropolitan courts would sentence a woman to impalement, it remained legal, and still thrived in the predominantly rural, provincial areas. This was typical of life in Rajistan. The progressive urban elites kept power through compromise with the traditional, tribal authorities of the countryside. Thus while the prime minister made significant progress toward wage equality in the cities, rural husbands retained their traditional power of life and death over their multiple wives; and while in the cities mandatory sex education in schools began at age 8, and less than half of couples with children were married, in the provinces, a girl caught flirting with a boy from a higher caste could be publicly flogged for her temerity. If she went further than flirting, she would likely be impaled.

Whenever politicians were forced to mention the arrangement between the cities and the provinces, they always represented it as an agreement that respected indigenous rights while promoting progressive values. Of course they never mentioned the bribes and corruption that sustained the system. Neither did anyone else. Those in the city preferred not to think about it, while those in the provinces knew to keep their mouths shut.

Anjali was different. Though from a provincial village, she gained citizenship in Chakrabesh, the capital city, by giving herself as a slave to a businessman who traded between the cities and the provinces, with the condition that after 10 years he would adopt her as his daughter and set her free. He was as good as his word, setting her free and signing adoption papers just after her 23rd birthday. So it was that at the age of 23, Anjali Batra went from provincial slave to citizen of Chakrabesh, a transformation almost unheard of in Rajistan.

Her life would serve as a perfect example of why the authorities made such a change in status so difficult. As a rural girl who had been made to say goodbye to her mother the morning she was impaled, she hated the political status quo. As an urban woman, she was free to voice her hatred.

And voice it she did! Supporting herself as an admin at an insurance company, she spent all of her free time at the University of Chakrabesh, talking with students about the injustice of impaling women.

"Think about this," she said to a group surrounding her on the campus quad one afternoon, "A man and a woman rob a traveller in the provinces, and they're caught. They're brought before the local chieftain, and he condemns them both to death. That's a problem right there, right!?" A murmur of agreement from the students. "Now!" she held up a finger to command their attention as she paced, looking as many of them in the eye as she could. "They take the man out in the woods and cut his throat. The woman? She doesn't go to the woods, she goes to the center of the village, and everybody gathers there to watch. They strip her naked and tie her to this frame, so she's on her knees and elbows, with her butt in the air, and they shove a stake into her body - it's about two or three inches thick." She waited, to let this sink in. Then: "But first! They slit her open with a knife between her anus and her vagina - that's where they shove the stake through. Why? Because if a 2-foot stake went through either her anus or her vagina, it would kill her pretty quickly. Like the guy they killed in the woods. They don't want that. In fact, the stake isn't even very sharp! They leave it blunt so they won't damage major organs while they shove it up inside of her." Several of the students looked sick - she knew she was reaching them. "Then, once they've got the stake in, they set it up vertically, so she's spitted on this thing, with her feet hanging above the ground. And they all just watch her die there." A moment of silence. "It can take hours." She waited several moments, letting her audience marinate in the collective guilt of their country. "This is wrong, guys!" Again she paced, looking in their eyes. "It's wrong, and we have to stop it. Write to your MPs, guys! Run for office yourselves! Protest! Make other Rajistanis face this reality. Do whatever it takes. We're going to end this!"
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Just saw you post that you were back and so started reading. Fine start, looking forward to catching up.

However before you criticize the rurals in Rajistan for impalement for serious crimes, remember that in the US, in Arkansas, Tree crucifies Barbara regularly for minor traffic offences.
 
Praefectus Praetorio said:
Just saw you post that you were back and so started reading. Fine start, looking forward to catching up.

However before you criticize the rurals in Rajistan for impalement for serious crimes, remember that in the US, in Arkansas, Tree crucifies Barbara regularly for minor traffic offences.
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And do not forget that in England until the late 18th C a female criminal convicted of treason (which included murder of a husband or a servant's master/mistress) was liable to be tied to a stake and burned.

Catherine Hayes was burned at Tyburn on Monday, the 9th of May 1726 for Petty Treason (the murder of her husband). She had persuaded her two lovers to kill her husband with an axe, a crime for which the two men were sentenced to hang. She too was dragged on a hurdle to Tyburn and when she had finished praying, was fastened to the stake by an iron chain round her body. A rope halter was put round her neck (running through a hole in the stake) and the faggots (bundles of dry brushwood) piled round her. When Richard Arnet, the executioner, lit the fire he found the flames too fierce to allow him to pull the strangling rope so the poor women was burned alive - a horrible death that took a considerable time. Her execution is vividly described in the Newgate Calendar. She was reduced to ashes within an hour, so we are told.
Here are a few more later examples:
Rebecca Downing on 29/06/1782 at Exeter for Murder of her mistress (Petty Treason)
Mary Bailey on 08/03/1784 at Winchester for Murder of her husband (Petty Treason)
Phoebe Harris on 21/06/1786 at Newgate for Coining (High Treason)
Margaret Sullivan on 25/06/1788 at Newgate for Coining (High Treason)
Catherine Murphy on 18/03/1789 at Newgate for Coining (High Treason)

Elizabeth Gaunt was the last woman to be burnt for high treasonin the normal sense of the word. She was executed in 1685, having been convicted of involvement in the Rye House plot. She was denied strangulation and was thus burned alive.
 
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Thanks to Anjali's childhood in the provinces, she and Sanjeev were able to survive the three days it took to escape back to Chakrabesh, evading capture the whole time, including two very close calls. As soon as they had arrived safely at Sanjeev's apartment (Anjali's money had run out and she could no longer afford her own) they posted the video they had taken, uneditted, including the moment Anjali had ended the condemned woman's suffering with a gunshot to the head.
"THIS IS REAL," she wrote. "I, Anjali Batra, was watching this woman's execution, powerless, as one woman against the world, to prevent it. So I did what little good I could do by ending her suffering. Will you join me? I am one woman, but together, the people of Rajistan can end this!!"

"It's certainly an unsettling video," said Prime Minister Patel on the television that evening, "and I've ordered an investigation into its authenticity."
"Do you believe it's real?" asked the interviewer. Patel paused.
"It's - I just don't know. I really don't. What's clear - and what's been clear for a long time, is that life in the provinces needs to improve. We all know that, and it's something I've been fighting for during my entire career. So the video may bring up other complications, but that much is clear."
"Do you believe the videos are authentic now, Mr. Varesh?" reporters asked the opposition leader.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," he replied, "If that's an authentic video, Patel is going way too far. WAY too far! Either he's putting an awful lot of money into this, and I'd like to know where it's coming from, by the way - or else - and this is a little difficult to believe, but the alternative is that he actually sent this girl into the province with a gun to shoot people. Really!? Is that what we've come to!? This is terrorism! This is not how our democracy works. We need a change!"
"It's the same as last time," said Sanjeev, walking to the couch from the kitchen with his dinner.

"Not for long," Anjali replied, not moving her dark eyes from the television. They she smiled a little - almost smirked. Sanjeev wanted to ask her, but he didn't.

Then came the extradition request. The governor of Lameshri Province requested official extradition of Anjali Batra to face charges of murder and prevention of justice.

"Believe me now?" she tweeted.
 
Juan1234 said:
Thanks to Anjali's childhood in the provinces, she and Sanjeev were able to survive the three days it took to escape back to Chakrabesh, evading capture the whole time, including two very close calls. As soon as they had arrived safely at Sanjeev's apartment (Anjali's money had run out and she could no longer afford her own) they posted the video they had taken, uneditted, including the moment Anjali had ended the condemned woman's suffering with a gunshot to the head.
"THIS IS REAL," she wrote. "I, Anjali Batra, was watching this woman's execution, powerless, as one woman against the world, to prevent it. So I did what little good I could do by ending her suffering. Will you join me? I am one woman, but together, the people of Rajistan can end this!!"

"It's certainly an unsettling video," said Prime Minister Patel on the television that evening, "and I've ordered an investigation into its authenticity."
"Do you believe it's real?" asked the interviewer. Patel paused.
"It's - I just don't know. I really don't. What's clear - and what's been clear for a long time, is that life in the provinces needs to improve. We all know that, and it's something I've been fighting for during my entire career. So the video may bring up other complications, but that much is clear."
"Do you believe the videos are authentic now, Mr. Varesh?" reporters asked the opposition leader.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," he replied, "If that's an authentic video, Patel is going way too far. WAY too far! Either he's putting an awful lot of money into this, and I'd like to know where it's coming from, by the way - or else - and this is a little difficult to believe, but the alternative is that he actually sent this girl into the province with a gun to shoot people. Really!? Is that what we've come to!? This is terrorism! This is not how our democracy works. We need a change!"
"It's the same as last time," said Sanjeev, walking to the couch from the kitchen with his dinner.

"Not for long," Anjali replied, not moving her dark eyes from the television. They she smiled a little - almost smirked. Sanjeev wanted to ask her, but he didn't.

Then came the extradition request. The governor of Lameshri Province requested official extradition of Anjali Batra to face charges of murder and prevention of justice.

"Believe me now?" she tweeted.
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I think it's brilliant that Anjali shot the woman condemned to impalement in the last chapter, leaving herself vulnerable to a charge of murder! Plus you're saving the main event for the main character. (I was also a little relieved. I cringed when they sliced open the woman's peritoneum in preparation for the impalement stake.) I may have to pass on the inevitable impalement of Anjali, being the tender hearted soul that I am, but I am very much enjoying the trip so far.
 
The extradition battle that followed was an odd mix of constitutional debate, legal confusion, and campaign spin war, resulting in all the publicity Anjali had hoped for. Half a dozen attorneys offered their services to Anjali pro bono, and the debate raged in the courtroom, in newsrooms, and online for weeks.

Anjali’s case was unique, because almost no citizen of Chakrabesh had ever committed a serious offense in the provinces that did not violate Chakrabeshi law as well. Her attorneys made a strong case that shooting the woman about to be impaled would be classified as an “act of mercy” under Chakrabeshi law, and therefore could not be considered murder. On the second charge, prevention of justice, she was again not guilty, because the capital did not recognize impalement as a legal form of punishment.

Under normal circumstances, these arguments would be immaterial, because the Provinces were sovereign over their own citizens, and the capital had no right to interfere with provincial justice. But Anjali was now a citizen of Chakrabesh, and claimed asylum from the city against her prosecutors. Whether Anjali could claim asylum hinged primarily on a given judge’s interpretation of the Rajistani constitution.

Anjali hardly cared about the outcome. She proudly walked the streets of the capital each day, a deep smile of satisfaction behind whatever other expression she wore. Each week, more and more people recognized her, stopped to shake her hand, asked for a selfie, asked for an autograph, or bought her coffee. She was winning. She could feel it.
 
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Juan1234 said:
The extradition battle that followed was an odd mix of constitutional debate, legal confusion, and campaign spin war, resulting in all the publicity Anjali had hoped for. Half a dozen attorneys offered their services to Anjali pro bono, and the debate raged in the courtroom, in newsrooms, and online for weeks.

Anjali’s case was unique, because almost no citizen of Chakrabesh had ever committed a serious offense in the provinces that did not violate Chakrabeshi law as well. Her attorneys made a strong case that shooting the woman about to be impaled would be classified as an “act of mercy” under Chakrabeshi law, and therefore could not be considered murder. On the second charge, prevention of justice, she was again not guilty, because the capital did not recognize impalement as a legal form of punishment.

Under normal circumstances, these arguments would be immaterial, because the Provinces were sovereign over their own citizens, and the capital had no right to interfere with provincial justice. But Anjali was now a citizen of Chakrabesh, and claimed asylum from the city against her prosecutors. Whether Anjali could claim asylum hinged primarily on a given judge’s interpretation of the Rajistani constitution.

Anjali hardly cared about the outcome. She proudly walked the streets of the capital each day, a deep smile of satisfaction behind whatever other expression she wore. Each week, more and more people recognized her, stopped to shake her hand, asked for a selfie, asked for an autograph, or bought her coffee. She was winning. She could feel it.
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I really like this. The legal-political wrangling and complications are all very plausible, without going in too much depth. I think it's just the perfect amount of info. Very nice touch.

I have a slight quibble with Anjali's reaction. Sensitive and conscientious soul that she is, I think it would weigh on her that she had killed a person. Certainly she would see it as a mercy killing, but rather than being proud and satisfied that she had done it, I think she would be angry and saddened at the injustice that had driven her to it.

Also, on my screen, the type is black on a black background, which makes it a little difficult to read. Is there any way to change that?
 
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