By Mubasshir Mushtaq
MUMBAI, India
India's Supreme Court has been deliberating over a challenge against the death sentence handed to a man convicted of a deadly series of bombings, as the country debates the impending execution.
India has been locked into a fiery debate over the expected hanging of Yakub Memon on Thursday, for his involvement in the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people.
Memon, a chartered accountant by profession, was sentenced to death in July 2007 by a special anti-terrorism court in Mumbai for allegedly conspiring with, transporting explosives and arranging logistics for the other accused, including his older brother, to travel to Pakistan for training.
Memon has consistently denied any wrongdoing, maintaining he came to know about the involvement of his elder brother Tiger Memon only after the serial bombings rocked India’s financial capital.
Memon has revealed that days before the serial bombings the family flew to Dubai, a regular family destination, where some members were involved in the smuggling trade.
From Dubai, the family members went to Pakistan on fake passports arranged by the Pakistani government, according to Memon's confessions.
In March 2013, India’s Supreme Court upheld Memon’s death penalty saying that he was the mastermind behind the attacks, a charge he denied, claiming he returned to India in 1994 to expose the role of Pakistan.
Repeated attempts to have his penalty quashed through mercy pleas and review petitions have been rejected since 2013 and the Maharashtra state government has already requested the same for his latest clemency appeal this month.
Indian news portal Rediff posthumously published a letter by B. Raman, the then chief of India’s top intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), saying that Memon was “informally picked up” from Kathmandu airport in 1994, not “arrested,” as the prosecution says, from a Delhi railway station.
Raman was “disturbed” that the prosecution failed notify the court of “mitigating circumstances” under which Memon cooperated and persuaded other members of his family to leave Pakistan and surrender to Indian authorities and said he was concerned that the intelligence agencies had reneged on its promises.
On July 26, a retired Supreme Court judge HS Bedi wrote in the daily Indian Express urging the country’s top court to take notice of the article written by Raman, to rectify the “injustice” to Memon.
On the same day, eminent Indian citizens including former Supreme Court judges, senior lawyers and politicians from across the political spectrum wrote an appeal to President Mukherjee requesting he reconsider Memon’s mercy plea.
All major English newspapers have argued against the imposition of the death penalty.
“Yakub turned over a significant cache of documents and other material that helped unravel the terror plot and proved Pakistan’s complicity in the terror bombings," the Times of India wrote in an editorial published on Monday. "Yakub’s full cooperation with investigators... should be factored into the punishment meted out to him.”
Justice Markandey Katju, a retired Supreme Court judge on Monday said that though he believes Memon to be “innocent," he sees no hope for him.
“Many people are pinning hope in some relief to Yakub Memon by the Supreme Court today, but I have no such hope. The petition will certainly be dismissed by the Supreme Court,” Katju wrote on his Facebook page.
Katju said Memon will be hanged on July 30 because of the “communalized atmosphere” and the “bloodlust in a large section of the majority community against the minority.”
