Yakub Memon: Mumbai Serial Blasts Convict Hanged To Death In India (TWEETS)

Memon was hanged at a prison in Nagpur in the western state. His petition to the President sought mercy; in the Supreme Court, his lawyers argued that judges had not followed due process when upholding his death sentence earlier this week.

As Yakub Memon’s body was allowed to be taken to his Mahim residence in Mumbai, the financial capital has been put on high alert and heavy security has been infused throughout the city.

NEW DELHI (AP) – Ignoring pleas and petitions by civil society groups, India on Thursday hanged an accountant convicted of supporting the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people in the country’s worst terrorist attack.

In the meantime reports suggest that his body was sent for an autopsy in the jail hospital by a medical team from a Nagpur government hospital, before being cleared for the last rites.

He was originally sentenced to death in 2007 as a key conspirator behind 12 blasts that ripped through several hotels, marketplaces and buildings.

“The senior officer in-charge of the operation himself wrote that death sentence was not correct”, Karat said, referring to the late B. Raman, a former Research and Analysis Wing official, who favored clemency for Memon for cooperating with and helping the officials in their investigation.

Rohatgi rejected calls to scrap the death penalty, invoking the threat of terrorism just days after militants killed six people in the state of Punjab, near India’s restive border with Pakistan.

India has executed Yakub Memon, the man convicted of financing the terror attack, 22 years after the deadly Mumbai bombings.

The last convicts to be hanged in the Nagpur jail were Wankhede brothers from Amravati in 1984 after they were found guilty in a murder case.

The motivation was said to have been revenge for the destruction of a 16th century Muslim holy site by a mob of Hindu nationalists.

“The debate on the need and desirability of retaining the death penalty has been overshadowed by much intellectual exertion on the nature of the crime involved, its gravity, its heinousness and the fatalities it caused”.

Jail administration handed over Yakub’s body to his elder brother, Suleiman and cousin, Usman Memon, around 9.30 am after the family gave an undertaking that they would not hold demonstrations with the body and ensure a quiet burial in Mumbai. He was brought to a Mumbai court to face trial a year later.

The death warrant was issued by a Special TADA Court judge on April 29, scheduling the execution for July 30.

Indian protesters shout slogans during a protest against the death sentence of convicted bomb plotter Yakub Memon on 27 July 2015.

Executed a year later for his role in the 2001 terror attack on the Indian Parliament.