The fraudsters were furious. The Sickularism gang was unhappy.
By Feb 2013, the Congress got the message.
“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, even said it was time for the government to abolish the death penalty altogether.
Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, urged India to “end this distressing use of executions as a way to satisfy some public opinion.”
The voters punished Congress and UP in April-May polls in 2014 and the country was saved from the hands of conspirators. Business fell in some shops.
And some Sickular shops had to be closed permanently.
At the end of November 2012, Ajmal Kasab, the only survivor of the group from Pakistan responsible for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, was hanged in the country's first execution since 2004.
Afzal Guru, a native of Jammu and Kashmir state, was convicted of helping five Islamic terrorists from the Lashkar-e-Tioba and Jaish-e-Mohammad groups to attack parliament on December 1, 2001.
Security forces shot dead all five of the gunmen after they claimed the lives of 12 people, including civilians, prompting Hindu groups to make outspoken public calls for the death penalty.
The then chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdulla (n 2013) broke with his ruling UPA coalition allies and said:
“Generations of Kashmiris will identify with Afzal Guru”.
In a televised interview. he said “You [the UPA government] will have to prove to the world that the death penalty is not used selectively.”
Shashikumar Velath, programs director at Amnesty International India, said:
“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".
For records:
The two most incriminating pieces of evidence against Afzal were a cellphone and a laptop confiscated at the time of arrest.
The arrest memos were signed by Bismillah, Geelani’s brother, in Delhi.
The seizure memos were signed by two men of the J&K Police.
During the trial it emerged the laptop contained the fake home-ministry passes, the fake identity cards that the terrorists used to access Parliament, and a Zee TV video clip of Parliament House.
Afzal had allegedly deleted all the information except the most incriminating bits, and he was speeding off to hand it over to Ghazi Baba, who the charge sheet described as the chief of operations.
The Supreme Court order said - “the incident (Parliament attack), which resulted in heavy casualties had shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.”
"But now that Afzal Guru has been hanged, I hope our collective conscience has been satisfied. Or is our cup of blood still only half full?, " wrote Arundhati Roy in one her essays published in 'The Hindu'.
ends
I remember these ... linked to Afzal hanging. When Congress tried quickly to change its image from being anti Hindu. Afzal was hanged in Feb 2013.
ReplyDeletePrior to that ....Zee TV broadcast a documentary called 'December 13'. It was reformative. Claimed to be the “Truth Based on the Police Charge Sheet.” The then prime minister Vajpayee and Home Minister Advani publicly appreciated the film. The Supreme Court refused to stay the screening saying that the media would not influence judges. The film was broadcast only a few days before the fast track court sentenced Afzal, Showkat and Geelani to death. -- Patil Samrat, Pune