Omar Abdullah was the state Chief Minister in 2013 when Afzal was executed.
He broke with his ruling coalition allies in New Delhi by condemning the decision.
“Generations of Kashmiris will identify with Afzal Guru,” he had said then in a televised interview. “You [the government] will have to prove to the world that the death penalty is not used selectively.”
Slugfest over Afzal Guru hanging: Rajnath Singh's counters Omar Abdullah with should he have been ‘garlanded’ rap
Rajnath Singh hit out at Omar Abdullah during an election gathering in Jammu’s Ramban.
“There used to be sympathy for terrorists. I just heard that National Conference leader Omar Abdullah has said Afzal Guru should not have been hanged. I want to ask Omar Abdullah, if he should not have been hanged, should he have been publicly garlanded?
I want an answer to this,” the defence minister and BJP leader said.
Omar Abdullah, a former Chief Minister on the other hand, is accused in Kashmir of doing little to prevent the execution of Guru.
Abdullah had earlier said : “I don’t believe that any purpose was served by executing him”.
In 2013 after his hanging in Delhi, Afzal's family claimed they were not notified of his execution. It was the era of Sickularism and Dr Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister.
The then UP Government said that Afzal Guru’s family were informed about the execution by “express post” which the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) in 2013 called a “shameful explanation.”
He was buried inside Tihar prison in New Delhi.
“The … 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 this,” said a statement from PUCL.
Shashikumar Velath, programs director at Amnesty International India, said it was time for the government to abolish the death penalty altogether.
“We condemn the execution in the strongest possible terms. This very regrettably puts India in opposition to the global trend towards moving away from the death penalty,” he said, adding that Guru had not received a fair trial.
India has practiced an informal moratorium on capital punishment in recent years: although it has sentenced a number of people to death, most are never carried out.
At the end of November 2012, Ajmal Kasab, the only survivor of the Pakistani group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, was hanged in the country's first execution since 2004.
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