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Image courtesy: Times
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Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, a Chartered Accountant by
profession, the 1993 Mumbai blast convict, brother of Tiger Memon, the
“mastermind” behind the blasts, was hanged to death in the Nagpur central jail
at 7 a.m. on July 30, 2015. The court held him guilty for being the driving
spirit of and financing the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts that killed 257 people.
On March 12 1993, thirteen explosions took place in
Mumbai, killing and injuring hundreds of Indians. The series of trials and
hearings started and he has sentenced to death. In May 2014, President Pranab
Mukherjee rejected Memon’s mercy plea. In April 2015, Supreme Court dismissed
Memon's petition seeking review of death sentence which was upheld by apex
court. A three-judge apex court bench headed by Chief Justice on July 21 2015
rejected Memon’s curative petition opposing that the grounds raised by him for
relief did not fall within principles laid down by the Supreme Court in 2002 in
deciding curative pleas. This was the last legal remedy left to avoid execution
of death sentence.
In this whole scenario, the death of Yakub Memon gave rise
to a lot of questions about the judicial system of our country and about us as
the biggest democracy. The rejection of plea after plea does not give a fair
view of the law and order we follow. A man who "supposedly"
surrendered himself to the authorities after almost a decade, and revealed
Pakistan’s role in the whole conspiracy was kept behind bars for as long as 20
years, more than the time served by people sentenced to lifetime imprisonment,
and eventually hanged to death.
The parody of justice in India will lie in him losing his
young life, not because he was directly involved in taking lives of many, but
because he happens to be the brother of the main culprit, the Mastermind
"Tiger" Memon, who is still hiding out, well away from the grasp of
our investigating authorities.
Will someone ever again, in good faith, accept their mistake
and trust the Indian judicial system as Yakub Memon did? Did the Indian law and
order system actually offer him anything in return - possibly that he retain
his thin thread on life in exchange for telling all to the police and the
prosecutors???. The questions are many and a number of them are left unanswered
as usual…
