Father’s Love for daughter: What was Yakub Memon’s last wish?
In November 2012, India executed a militant convicted for a 2008 attack by militant gunmen on Mumbai’s landmark Taj Hotel and other targets that killed 166 people, ending what many had seen as an undeclared moratorium on capital punishment.
Memon, who was convicted over his involvement in the 1993 Bombay bombings by Special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities court in 2007, was hanged on his 53rd birthday. After the Supreme Court heard Memon’s final plea, his lawyer Anand Grover told reporters at dawn on Thursday that he had “exhausted” his remedies, AP reported.
Incensed by the demolition of Babri Masjid (Mosque) on December 6, 1992 in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya and the communal riots that followed (especially in Mumbai), silver smuggler Tiger Memon (Yakub’s elder brother), along with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, hatched a conspiracy for retaliation.
The preparations for the hanging at the Nagpur Central Prison were underway much before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, 1050 km away in Delhi, pronounced its order at 4.50 am. As a matter of fact, there were some journalists, politicians, and civil society members who wrote to the president and asked him to spare Yakub Memon from being executed because of a crime that he himself did not mastermind. NCP leader Tariq Anwar said that death penalty in peace loving India may not be a right message and now people should come forward and raise their voices against it. CPI leader D Raja also shared a similar view saying that an eye for an eye should not be the philosophy of India’s judicial prudence.
It rejects the claims made by some activists that “Yakub Memon had been “betrayed” after he surrendered to the Indian law enforcement agencies and revealed valuable information”. A total of 100 people have been convicted. The judgments began in late 2006. The sentences of the others were commuted to life imprisonment. Police bandobast has been increased in Mahim area of Mumbai.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty global, have decried the hanging.
She said Memon’s case highlights another “fundamental flaw” that India lacks any credible process to assess whether an accused is capable of reform. But it has carried out only three executions in the last decade, all in terrorism cases.
However, others believe that terror convicts “should not be shown any mercy”. After about 90 minutes of court proceedings, the judges rejected Memon’s appeal and he was hanged in Nagpur Central Jail a little before 7am.
Memon’s body will be taken out of Nagpur prison at 11 am.
Kirti Ajmera, a stockbroker who was severely injured in the bombing at the stock exchange, said hours before Memon was hanged that he supported the decision.