Sir: When serious crimes start taking place in high preponderance, people, driven by their emotions and outrage, demand some very high measures for it. Some measures are not even proportional to the crimes itself. One of these measures is chemical castration of rapists. Turkey is considering introducing chemical castration for child abusers after several cases of sexual assault have triggered public outrage. Swept by their emotions, Turkish people want to eliminate the sexual desire or performance forever. This is barbaric and unjust. I am not being dismissive of the fact that the crimes of such enormity need to be punished stringently and treated as exceptions, but this is not how meaningful reforms are materialised. Honestly, rape is so brutish and brutal that no punishment can satisfy its victim. The answer can never be found in knee-jerk reaction. The answer is in meaningful reforms, activism, mobilisation, community vigilance and other measures for prevention. Let’s reform and implement the current laws instead of resorting to the more extreme ones. HAMZA AHMED Lahore Published in Daily Times, February 22nd 2018.