The nation will keenly watch on Monday the Supreme Court’s verdict on the plea of 1993 Bombay blasts’ convict Yakub Memon seeking a stay on his execution scheduled for July 30. Memon’s plea is listed before a SC Bench headed by Justice AR Dave. The crucial hearing comes amid leaders of various parties, social activists, legal luminaries and media personalities submitting a fresh petition to President Pranab Mukherjee requesting him to commute Memon’s death sentence.
As the date for Memon’s hanging draws closer, the issue has snowballed into a major controversy involving those seeking stay on his death penalty and others who want justice for the victims of the blasts in which the Memon family was neck-deep involved.
More than renewing the debate on death penalty itself, the “mercy seekers” are also pleading for leniency for Memon claiming he surrendered and his conviction was based on retracted statement of a co-accused.
Conversely, those wanting him to be sent to gallows without delay are pointing out that he was fully involved in the entire conspiracy and sparing his life will send a wrong message about India’s resolve to penalise terrorists.
On July 24, senior advocate Raju Ramachandran mentioned the petition for Yakub Memon, and another senior counsel TR Andhyarujina appeared for Death Penalty litigation Clinic, associated with the National law University Delhi, which has been filing petitions in apex court against the execution of death penalty in different cases.
Memon has approached the apex court for an immediate hearing of his petition saying that “undue haste” was shown to execute him without following the due process of law. He alleged that “death warrant proceedings were carried out in Mumbai” while he is in jail in Nagpur and therefore he was not represented through his lawyer.
The petition said the death warrant was issued by the TADA court in Mumbai when his curative petition was pending in the apex court, “thereby presumptuously pre-determining its negative outcome.”
Memon has also contended that all legal remedies have not been exhausted in his case and that he has also approached the Maharashtra Governor with a plea for mercy.
The apex court on April 9 had dismissed Memon's petition seeking review of his death sentence which was upheld on March 21, 2013.
Even as the BJP, the Shiv Sena, the JD(U) opposed grant of clemency to Memon,
leaders of various parties, including BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha and its expelled MP Ram Jethmalani, eminent jurists and persons from different walks of life submitted a fresh petition to President Pranab Mukherjee requesting him to waive Memon's death penalty.
In the new petition urging stay against imminent execution of Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, the signatories claimed that there are “substantive and fresh grounds” that can be considered on merits.
In the 15-page petition, the signatories have cited various legal points and international commitments to argue that Memon should not be hanged. “Grant of mercy in this case will send out a message that while this country will not tolerate acts of terrorism, as a nation we are committed to equal application of the power of mercy and values of forgiveness, and justice. Bloodletting and human sacrifice will not make this country a safer place; it will, however, degrade us all,” the signatories said.
Besides Sinha and Jethmalani, those, who have signed the petition include MPs like Mani Shankar Aiyar (Congress), Majeed Memon (NCP), Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), D Raja (CPI), KTS Tulsi, HK Dua (nominated), T Siva (DMK), former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat, CPI(Ml)-liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, Brinda Karat (CPI-M), noted advocate prashant Bhushan, and filmmakers and actors like Naseeruddin Shah and Mahesh Bhatt, MK Raina and Tushar Gandhi. Media personality N Ram is also one the petitioners.
It also included various academicians, members of the legal fraternity activists and retired judges --- Justice Panachand Jain, Justice HS Bedi, Justice PB Sawant, Justice H Suresh, Justice KP Siva Subramaniam, Justice SN Bhargava, Justice (retd) K Chandru, and Justice Nagmohan Das, noted lawyer Indira Jaising. Others include academicians like Irfan Habib, Arjun Dev, DN Jha, and social activists Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze and John Dayal. They cited that India is a signatory to an international commitment to abolish death penalty and hence death penalty cannot be imposed in India.
“Yakub Memon was not given advance notice of the death warrant hearing and as a result of which he and his lawyers could not participate and contest the issuance of the death warrant. lack of hearing makes the present death warrant void,” they said, citing a Supreme Court decision in the May 2015 Shabnam versus Union of India and Others case. They said that there are some very “disturbing” aspects of this case which make the award of death sentence to Yakub Memon as “grossly unfair, arbitrary and excessive”.
Yakub Memon has served more than 20 years in prison since his arrest. His trial took 14 years to complete. While the Supreme Court used this long period of incarceration as a mitigating circumstance to commute the death sentences of the other 10 co-convicts, it applied a different yardstick to Yakub.
They also argued that Memon is mentally unfit for execution as he has been suffering from schizophrenia for the last 20 years. They have also cited commutation of death sentences of convicts in other terror cases like late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
Former Supreme Court judge Justice (Retd.) Markandey Katju too jumped into Memon's defense claiming there has been “gross travesty of justice” in the case of Yakub Memon, the sole death-row convict and a co-conspirator of fugitive Dawood Ibrahim in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts.
Katju said after carefully studying the judgment of the court he finds that the evidence on which Memon has been found guilty is “very weak”. “This evidence is retracted confession of the co-accused and alleged recoveries,” he said.
Meanwhile, alleging “petty politics” behind the controversy over the death sentence to Memon, the BJP said the decision was taken after a thorough legal process and that it should be honoured by all. “If terrorism has no religion, how is it possible that terrorists can be ascribed to their religionIJ law is blind. It does not have eyes to differentiate on the basis of religion and colour,” BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said.
“let us not try, for our petty political gains, to give eyes to law. Similarly, terrorism has no religion. let us not try for our petty political gains to ascribe a religion to a terrorist or terrorism. Connecting terrorism with any religion or community will be doing injustice to that religion or community,” he said.
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