Indian authorities had accused Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) – two militant groups operating from Pakistan – of perpetrating the attack.
LeT denied involvement.
In 2013, the convict Afzal Guru charged with waging war against India was executed with the capital punishment on February 9th in a rather secret operation during the tenure of Dr Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister and Pranab Mukherjee as the President of India.
Senior leader from Maharashtra, Sushilkumar Shinde was the Home Minister and he had signed the death warrant, reports said.
As happens with issues related to SICKULARISM, the hanging of Afzal had turned controversial with allegations that the decision was taken by the Congress-party led coalition regime owing to political considerations desperate to be seen as performing with general elections due next year.
“The tearing hurry with which Afzal Guru was hanged, accompanied by the flouting of all established norms by not giving his family their legal right to meet him before taking him to the gallows, clearly indicates that there were political considerations behind taking this step,” the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, a renowned rights group, said in a statement (2013).
Even as ruling Congress party and other political parties like the principal opposition BJP and Marxists have backed the government move terming it as culmination of the due legal process, sensing trouble in his militancy-hit state of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, the chief minister said there were several questions that needed to be answered.
“Generations of Kashmiris will identify with Afzal Guru. You will have to prove to the world that the death penalty is not used selectively. The onus rests on the judiciary and the political leadership to show that this wasn't a selective execution," he said in television interview.
He has obliquely referred to the Tamil killers of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sikh killers of a former Punjab chief minister. He also distanced himself from the move of the federal government even as his party is a part of the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.
"Please understand that there is more than one generation of Kashmiris that has come to see themselves as victims, that has come to see themselves as category of people who will not receive justice,” he said.
Questions have been mostly raised on the manner decided to inform Afzal’s family about the execution decision through a Speed Post.
“More shameful is the explanation of the Home department that the wife and family of Afzal Guru were intimated of the hanging by a mail sent by Speed Post,” the PUCL said. These views were endorsed by chief minister Abdullah also.
According to reports from Kashmir, Afzal Guru’s family in Kashmir said they were not informed of his imminent execution, in violation of international standards on the use of the death penalty. The body was also not returned to the family for last rites and burial, in violation of international standards.
Afzal was convicted in the December 2001 attack on Parliament, and was sentenced to death by a special Prevention of Terrorism Act Court in 2002. The Delhi High Court confirmed the judgment in 2003 and his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court of India in 2005. The sentence was scheduled to be carried out on 20 October 2006, but Afzal was given a stay of execution and remained ondeath row.
On 3 February 2013, his mercy petition was rejected by the President Pranab Mukherjee. The execution order was signed by the Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on February 4.
No comments:
Post a Comment