When a thick rope is wound around 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon’s neck in Nagpur jail, on his 53rd birthday, we can expect to be bombarded with grotesque details of his last moments: his final words, his last meal, or his manner of walk to the gallows. Then there will be jingoistic fireworks, vulgar chest-thumping and loud proclamations of ‘justice served’. Yet, many of those who rue the death penalty as barbaric, as well as those who believe that Yakub is undeserving of such a sentence, will see their voices dimmed.
Public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam (who infamously cooked up the story of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack accused Ajmal Kasab’s demand for biryani) has hailed the verdict to deny Yakub a reprieve as “historic”, saying it will send across a strong message to Pakistan. Justice P.D. Kode, who passed the execution judgement in 2007, says it will “restore the common man’s faith in justice.” Some argue that Yakub’s death will bring some closure to the families of the victims. But what point will Yakub’s death really prove?
India’s secular fabric was stained when politically driven Hindutva extremists demolished the 400-year-old Babri Masjid in December 1992 and slaughtered many innocent people. Deadly riots consequently broke out in Mumbai and other parts of the country consuming over 1,000 lives, mostly Muslims. As ‘retribution’ for these events, Mumbai was ripped apart by 13 devastating blasts on a Black Friday in March 1993. More than 250 innocent lives were lost and hundreds were injured in a dastardly act of terror.
The top conspirators of the blasts, including Yakub’s brother Ibrahim “Tiger” Memon and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, are absconding. Yakub, who had fled India with his family a couple of days before the blasts, did not pay heed to his brother’s warnings and decided to return to his “homeland” in 1994 to prove his innocence. He chose to leave behind a protected life under the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan. Only a person sure of his innocence and fully aware of the consequences would dare such a “difficult and risky adventure”, he stated in a letter to the Chief Justice of India in 1999.
Not only did Yakub fully cooperate with the Indian agencies, but he even assisted officials in uncovering important details in the conspiracy. But the Chartered Accountant, the most educated in the Memon family, did not anticipate the betrayal that was to follow. Collaborating with the agencies only pulled him closer to the gallows.
Yakub’s legal killing will not only take us one step back in the fight against capital punishment, proven to have little impact as a deterrent to crime. There are also many grey areas in his case itself, to argue against the death penalty. For instance, there is still a cloud on the manner of Yakub’s discovery: he claims that he surrendered in Kathmandu; the Central Bureau of Investigation says he was arrested from New Delhi Railway Station. In a revealing article written in 2007 but published just recently, former intelligence boss B. Raman, who coordinated the entire operation, says that Yakub was indeed informally picked up from Nepal before being arrested formally in Delhi. Arguing for Yakub, Mr. Raman, one of the most respected officers the country has had, says he did not believe that Yakub deserved to hang.
The political tinge in hanging
Yakub’s involvement in the conspiracy was peripheral, and there is no direct evidence against him. His conviction was based on confessions of the six co-accused, five of whom later retracted. He was charged with financing the blasts, which he claims he did unwittingly. Even as many of his co-accused, including those who actually planted the bombs, got away with lesser charges, or had their death penalties commuted, Yakub will become the first convict to be hanged for the blasts. Why is he the only one?
This is not to say that Yakub is totally innocent. He has been convicted by the law and that must be respected, but the death penalty granted to him is not only excessive and disproportionate but reeks of primitive vendetta. It is also a display of regressive action by a frustrated system’s failure to nab the real culprits. “Yakub is paying for the sins of his brother. His surname has destroyed him,” his wife Rahin Memon said after Yakub’s curative petition was rejected by the Supreme Court.
The hanging is also not bereft of a communal and political tinge. The manner in which the Indian state has picked people it wants to hang is revealing. There are several prisoners on the death row in the country, but we see an urgency to hang only Yakub. The Maharashtra government issued an order to hang him even before he exhausted all his legal options of a reprieve.
Yakub’s death will further strengthen the perception that the death penalty, often discriminatory, arbitrary, and disproportionate in India, as observed by Amnesty International, is reserved for Muslims, Dalits or the poor. A recent study by the National Law University shows that a mindboggling 94 per cent of people on death row are Muslims or Dalits. As senior journalist Jyoti Punwani wrote, “Is it just a coincidence that while the majority of those executed since Independence have been Hindus, no murderer motivated by Hindutva has been executed?”
A travesty of justice
That brings us to a larger question of prejudiced justice in India. Yakub’s hanging is being communalised, many say. We cannot expect any public sympathy for Yakub or for any of the accused in the blasts. But if Yakub deserves the gallows, then why shouldn’t Maya Kodnani, a Bharatiya Janata Party legislator, and Babu Bajrangi not follow suit for their conviction for killing 97 Muslims in Ahmebadad in 2002? Doesn’t the “collective conscience” crave for justice for the State-sponsored slaughter of innocent Indians in Gujarat?
And what about the quench for retribution for the spilling of blood on Mumbai’s streets in the riots? Politicians, including Shiv Sena and BJP leaders, and senior officers, who were duty-bound to protect lives, were indicted by two independent panels, including the Sri Krishna Commission, for instigating and executing the riots.
Unlike the 1993 blast conspirators who escaped to foreign land, the accused in the Babri demolition, often touted as the ‘original sin,’ and the 1993 riots, live safe in India, many as elected representatives. Many of the indicted officers have been promoted since. If this isn’t a travesty of justice, what is?
Now compare the fate of the accused with those fighting for justice. Be it activist Teesta Setalvad’s hounding for her fight for justice in the Gujarat riots or public prosecutor Rohini Salian being pressurised to go soft on Hindutva terrorists, a dangerous trend has developed over the years.
It is well-established that politically backed criminals and rioters run scot-free in our country, no matter the degree of their crime. Why were the killers of Rajiv Gandhi and Beant Singh, who have political backing of the Tamil Nadu and Punjab governments, been shown clemency?
Yakub’s hanging, Ms. Punwani further says, will also send across the “ominous message” that our criminal justice system recognises guilt by association, and that there is no place for reformation. Did the state prove to the court that Yakub had no scope for reformation? Yakub spent two decades in solitary confinement, during which he completed two degrees, Political Science and English.
Undoubtedly, terror attacks are the most reprehensible form of violence. But terrorism, communal violence and hate don’t foster in isolation. They are politically and socially driven, manufactured realities that stem from the failure of a fair system. What would have caused a mild-mannered, successful Chartered Accountant from Mumbai to land where he is today? If the Indian state feels that his hanging will send a strong message to terrorists, it is wrong.
Killing Yakub won’t bring justice or closure to the victims of the riots and the blasts. Sparing him won’t amount to betrayal. It will, in fact, give us a chance to prove that our democracy is mature and progressive, and we choose to fight terrorism through restorative means. That opportunity, however, is lost for now.
omar.rashid@thehindu.co.in
