Attacking those who sought leniency for Yakub Memon, the Shiv Sena on Friday demanded they should be tried for treason for sympathising with the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict who was hanged on Thursday.
An especially strident editorial in the party’s mouthpiece ‘Saamna’ branded those arguing against Memon’s capital punishment as “enemies of the country” while urging the government to ensure that the deceased convict not be transformed into a martyr.
The souls of all those affected by the 1993 Mumbai blasts will be at peace only when its main masterminds, Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim, are brought back to the country and sent to the gallows, the editorial said.
It added that those who had written letters asking for mercy to be shown towards Yakub Memon had not lost any of their near or dear ones in the Mumbai blasts and thus had no qualms in pleading for Yakub’s leniency.
While remarking that the 1993 serial blasts was the handiwork of Pakistan, the editorial noted that the fact that Dawood and Tiger Memon were still in hiding there underscored Pakistan’s complicity.
While conceding a point to its arch-nemesis, MIM president, Asaduddin Owaisi, who said that the killers of the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh were still living despite being awarded death sentences, the Sena editorial nevertheless argued that this could not have been a justification for granting mercy to Yakub Memon.
