Yakub Memon had exhausted all legal options
With a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court rejecting Yakub Memon's plea, the decks were cleared for the first hanging of a convict in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case. Yakub Memon had exhausted all his legal remedies, and the defence put forth by his supporters or sympathisers or those who believe that he had been mistreated by the law, lay in tatters. Ever since he was sentenced by a Mumbai special court to death in 2007 for his complicity in the blasts, Yakub Memon had sought relief from the High Court to the Supreme Court, and petitioned the Maharashtra Governor and the President of India for the commutation of his death sentence. He had failed on all counts.
The apex court rejected his review pleas and upheld the legalities of the curative petition and the death warrant. The Government's stand, whether that of the previous ones or of the incumbent NDA, had been one of unison: That Yakub Memon must pay for his sins with death, because this was the rarest of rare case — and that too, one of terrorism against the country and its innocent citizens. More than 250 persons had lost their lives in the deadly 13 serial bomb attacks on March 12, 1993. His plea, which saved him from the gallows for a few days because of a verdict by one of the apex court judges, Justice Kurian Joseph, had to do with technicalities.
Yakub Memon argued that the death warrant issued against him came even as his curative petition was pending with the Supreme Court — and, therefore, before he had exhausted his legal remedies. Justice Joseph added an additional element by questioning the curative plea process itself — something which was not originally there in Memon's petition.
Muddying the waters further, some citizens petitioned the President to commute Yakub Memon's death sentence. While some of them are in principle opposed to capital punishment, others believe that Yakub Memon had been ‘betrayed' after he surrendered to the Indian law enforcement agencies and revealed valuable information about Pakistan's complicity in the attacks, on an understanding that he would be dealt with leniently. There are yet others who nonsensically, but dangerously, claim he has been targeted on religious grounds. This theory gained substance following a senior former intelligence officer's claim that there had indeed been an understanding, that Yakub Memon had not been nabbed, and that he had willingly given himself up.
But the court does not go by rhetorical claims; it needs evidence. There is nothing on the record to demonstrate that the Indian state and Yakub Memon had reached the understanding being touted. If indeed intelligence officials had given him some assurance, it must have been at personal levels — meaningless in legalese. Retired Justice PD Kode, who had pronounced the death sentence, has stated that neither the prosecution nor Yakub Memon had made any claim of a formal understanding before his court. It is, disgraceful that certain people talk of unsubstantiated ‘mitigating circumstances' and hold Yakub Memon ‘innocent' or a ‘victim' of a so-called unethical U-turn by the state. Meanwhile, there cannot be a full closure until the masterminds, Dawood Ibrahim and Yakub Memon's brother, ‘Tiger' Memon, are brought to India to stand trial.