Blatantly disregarding fresh evidence from Indian Intelligence sources of his cooperation, appeals from mercy from a wide range of Indian citizens as well as an initial split verdict by a Supreme Court bench, Yakub Memon, convicted in the 1993 Bombay Blasts case, was hanged to death.
Yakub Memon maintained till the end that it was his brother Tiger Memon, not himself, who was the mastermind of the blasts. Evidence for Yakub’s own involvement rests on the weak ground of a police approver’s testimony and the retracted custodial confessions of two co-accused people. Yakub not only escaped ISI protection in Pakistan to return to India but also brought members of his family back to India, trusting in the assurance that the Indian justice system would treat them fairly. Instead, Yakub been executed after being jailed for 22 years.
In the wake of Yakub’s hanging, many have raised the very valid objections to capital punishment itself as unjust and vengeful. But the point must also be made that Yakub’s case did not meet the bar of ‘rarest of the rare’ even by the guidelines laid down for death penalty by Indian Courts. Evidence emerged from intelligence agents themselves suggesting strong mitigating circumstances; it is only by ignoring these mitigating circumstances that Yakub was executed.
Yakub’s hanging underlines the systematic injustices, biases and double standards built into India’s judicial and political systems. It starkly underlines the utter failure of the State to punish the guilty of the 1992-93 Mumbai riots, which killed more than 900 people. The 1993 blasts were perpetrated in the name of avenging the Mumbai riots. The Sri Krishna Commission named Shiv Sena and BJP leaders as well as policemen who perpetrated the riots – yet these guilty were never prosecuted and punished. Instead, the mastermind Bal Thackeray received a state funeral and a memorial in Mumbai.
Similarly, the perpetrators of the Gujarat genocide of 2002 enjoy power. Even those convicted for the Naroda Patiya massacre in 2002 – such as Babu Bajrangi and BJP’s ex-MLA Maya Kodnani – are out on bail, and Kodnani’s life sentence was suspended recently by the Gujarat High Court. How come the perpetrators of the Hashimpura massacre of Muslims or Bathe and Bathani massacres of the oppressed castes get mass acquittals? Why such lenience for those perpetrators of mass killings who enjoy political support? Why does ‘rule of law’ become so flexible for Kodnani and Bajrangi and the Hashimpura or Bathe-Bathani convicts, and rigid when it comes to Yakub Memon?
The case of the blasts perpetrated by Sanghi terror groups is even more shameful. A series of such cases are being sabotaged by investigative agencies in the Modi regime. A Public Prosecutor in the Malegaon blasts case, Rohini Salan, has gone on record to say that the NSA was pressurizing her to weaken the case. A witness in the Ajmer blasts case, Randhir Singh, turned hostile – and was rewarded with a Ministerial berth in the Jharkhand BJP Government’s Cabinet! The entire file of the Jammu and Kashmir mosque attack case has disappeared. Blasts cases involving Muslim accused are accompanied by a high-pitched patriotic media rhetoric branding any demands for due process or appeals for mercy as ‘anti-national’ or ‘support for terrorism’. Barring a few honourable exceptions, the media is largely silent on this open, systematic sabotage of justice in the Sanghi terror cases.
The Tripura Governor Tathagata Roy branded the mourners in Yakub Memon’s funeral procession as ‘potential terrorists,’ followed by BJP MPs like Sakshi Maharaj who said all such mourners should be sent to Pakistan. Many BJP leaders have branded all citizens who opposed the hanging and pleaded for mercy, as ‘anti-nationals.’ It is condemnable that Roy should be allowed to occupy a Constitutional post after his communal tweet. And the BJP leaders making such statements need to be asked why they don’t find perpetrators of communal and caste massacres and Sanghi terror – and their political protectors in their own party and Government – as anti-national.
The stance of the non-BJP and self-proclaimed ‘secular’ political spectrum on the Yakub hanging was also shameful. While the Congress and SP toed the BJP line, there was deafening silence from the RJP, JDU and other parties. The united position of the Left parties that boldly mobilized opinion against the hanging was encouraging.
Yakub’s hanging, with its message of the untrustworthiness and double standards of the Indian State, has left a deep scar on the Muslim psyche, comparable to the wound caused by Operation Bluestar and the anti-Sikh pogrom of November 1984 or the demolition of Babri Masjid and subsequent Mumbai-Surat riots and Gujarat genocide.
Democratic forces must take up the challenge of turning the alienation of India’s minorities and oppressed sections including Dalits, workers and women, and their anger at double standards, into a shared revolutionary resolve for democracy and justice. Yakub’s hanging has revived and strengthened demands for abolition of death penalty and for bringing the guilty of communal riots and caste massacres to justice. This growing democratic voice shows the way forward to broaden and intensify the resistance to the Modi regime’s assault on democracy.
