Should India Abolish the Death Penalty?

Yakub Memon has been hanged in Nagpur Central Jail on Thursday, July 30.

The 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon may be hanged Thursday as the Supreme Court Wednesday rejected his petition against the death warrant citing procedural lapses, agencies report. Almost two hours later, they decided that Memon had been given “ample opportunity” to challenge his death sentence, and that he had availed of all existing legal options.

He was hanged on Thursday at a prison in Nagpur in the western state of Maharashtra, hours after the Supreme Court dismissed a final plea to stay the sentence. However, the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation said that he was arrested in New Delhi on August 5, 1994.

“It is disgraceful that certain people talk of unsubstantiated “mitigating circumstances” and hold Yakub Memon “innocent” or a “victim” of a so-called unethical U-turn by the state”, the paper says. “I have done my duty”, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said.

“I corroborate my comment by saying it is for every one to learn how Akali Dal has saved the killer of Beant Singh”.

On 12 March 1993, bombs tore through several sites in Mumbai – then known as Bombay – including the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Indian prosecutors said the assaults were ordered by the local underworld in revenge for the demolition of a 16th century mosque in northern India by Hindu zealots.

Yakub Memon’s brother, Tiger, is widely seen as having been the mastermind behind the attacks, alongside gangland boss Dawood Ibrahim. A total of 100 people have been convicted. The others had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. The judgments began in late 2006. Memon left Mumbai just before the serial blasts in 1993 with his family.

Sashi Tharoor, a former UN undersecretary and a high-profile member of India’s parliament, tweeted today after the hanging, which took place in the city of Nagpur, that, “There is no evidence that death penalty serves as a deterrent: to the contrary in fact”. But it has carried out only three executions in the last decade, all in terrorism cases. The vast majority of the 100-150 death sentences handed down each year are eventually commuted to life in prison.

“It’s extremely sad that India has gone ahead, we had been hoping India will now call for a moratorium”, said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch.

Memon and two other brothers were convicted in 2006 by a specially designated court, using controversial anti-terror legislation that was introduced after the attacks that is no longer on the statute books. Initially, the jail authorities were not inclined to hand over the body and planned to perform the last rites in an isolated spot in the jail campus.

Memon was executed on his 53rd birthday after President Pranab Mukherjee rejected Memon’s clemency on Wednesday for a 14 day delay on his execution so he could prepare for death and bid his goodbye to his family.

“We are monitoring and reviewing the security arrangements regularly”, Mumbai Police spokesperson Dhananjay Kulkarni said.