Abolish Death Penalty India: Tahir Merchant

Showing posts with label Tahir Merchant. Show all posts

Monday, December 24, 2018

1993 Mumbai blasts convict Tahir Merchant dies in Pune hospital (Maharashtra)

Apr 19, 2018, 06:30 AM IST

Tahir Merchant (aka Tahir Taklya), who was convicted in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, died at the state-run Sassoon Hospital, Pune in the wee hours of Wednesday. Merchant was lodged in Yerwada Central Jail, Pune.

Tahir Merchant

A close aide of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, Merchant was awarded with death sentence. He was arrested on June 8, 2010, for his role in the Mumbai serial blasts that claimed 257 lives on March 12, 1993. Merchant was convicted for conspiring, facilitating and knowingly commissioning acts of terror. "Convict Tahir Merchant was admitted in Sassoon hospital at about 3 am due to chest pain. He died in the hospital during treatment at around 3.45 am," said Additional Director General of Police (Prisons) Dr BK Upadhyay.

The Supreme Court had stayed the death sentence of Merchant in December 2017. Merchant had attended the conspiracy meeting in Dubai and helped his associates to arrange men from Mumbai, who were sent to Pakistan for arms training. Merchant had also collected funds to procure arms. He had planned to set up an illegal arms manufacturing factory unit in India. Merchant, a close aide of Dawood and Tiger Memon, used to work as manager in a carpet shop at Sharjah in the UAE. He was arrested by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) following his deportation from Abu Dhabi in June 2010. The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA) court in Mumbai had sentenced Merchant to death in the case on September 7, 2017, along with Feroz Rashid Khan.

ABOUT TAHIR TAKLYA

Tahir Merchant (aka Taklya) was arrested on June 8, 2010, for his role in the Mumbai serial blasts that claimed 257 lives on March 12, 1993.
Merchant had attended the conspiracy meeting in Dubai and helped arrange men from Mumbai, who went to Pakistan for arms training.
He had also collected funds to procure arms for terror activities.
The TADA court in Mumbai had sentenced Merchant to death in the serial bomb blasts case on September 7, 2017.

Source: https://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-1993-mumbai-blasts-convict-tahir-merchant-dies-in-pune-hospital-2606434 (Accessed 24 December 2018)

Sunday, December 23, 2018

1993 Mumbai blasts case: SC stays death sentence of Mohammed Tahir Merchant (Maharashtra)

By Madhuri Adnal | Published: Monday, December 4, 2017, 17:28 [IST] 1

The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the death sentence of convict Mohammed Tahir Merchant in connection with 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case which killed 257 people and injured over 700.

The court had earlier convicted and sentenced all the seven accused under various laws including Indian Penal Code, TADA, Explosives Act, Explosive Substances Act, Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act and others. Merchant was convicted for conspiring, facilitating and knowingly commissioning acts of terror. All the seven accused were facing multiple charges which included criminal conspiracy, 'waging war against the Government of India' and murder. However they were acquitted of the serious charge of 'waging war against the nation'.

On March 12, 1993, Mumbai was shattered by a series of 13 blasts in quick succession at various locations in the city and suburbs, creating the worst unprecedented mayhem in the country, killing 257 and injuring 700 others.

Source: https://www.oneindia.com/india/1993-mumbai-blasts-case-sc-stays-death-sentence-mohammed-t-2595476.html (Accessed 23 December 2018)

All about Tahir Merchant and Firoz Khan, the two sentenced to death in 1993 Mumbai blasts case (Maharashtra)

Updated: Sep 07, 2017 16:54 IST

Hindustan Times

A special court awarded the death sentence to Tahir Merchant and Firoz Khan, while awarding life imprisonment to prime accused Abu Salem and Karimullah Khan in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case. Merchant was convicted for conspiring, facilitating and knowingly commissioning acts of terror.

Here are the roles of Merchant and Firoz Khan in the blasts case:

Tahir Merchant

Tahir Merchant made transport arrangements for the co-accused who were trained in Pakistan. The prosecution said he, along with Karimullah Khan, arranged for their passports. Merchant attended conspiracy meetings in Dubai and motivated his associates to arrange men from Mumbai to be sent to Pakistan for arms training. He collected funds to procure arms and planned to set up an illegal arms manufacturing factory in India.

Firoz Khan

On January 8, 1993, two months ahead of the blasts, Mohammed Dossa (absconding brother of Mustafa Dossa) sent Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan and another accused to Alibagh and Mhasla to inform Customs officials and landing agents about the landing (of arms and explosives) that was to take place the next day. He also attended conspiracy meetings.

Towards the end of the trial, he sought to become an approver. However, the court rejected his plea after the CBI told the court that it has enough evidence against all the accused and they don’t need any approver.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/all-about-tahir-merchant-firoz-khan-who-got-death-sentence-in-1993-mumbai-blasts-case/story-6TsoCgCC57pVYeI4gHpwCI.html (Accessed 23 December 2018)

India Mumbai blasts 1993: Two sentenced to death (Maharashtra)

7 September 2017

A court in the Indian city of Mumbai has sentenced two men to death for their role in bomb attacks in 1993.

The blasts, allegedly to avenge the killing of Muslims in riots, targeted a dozen sites and killed 257 people. Firoz Khan and Tahir Merchant were convicted of criminal conspiracy and murder and sentenced to death. Abu Salem, who fled India after the bombings and was extradited from Portugal in 2005, received a life sentence, along with Karimulla Khan. Another man, Riyaz Siddiqui, was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Inside the courtroom

The room where the sentences were read out looked like any other tired court chamber in India - small with peeling paint and wooden furniture. More than 100 people were packed into the court, mostly police, lawyers and journalists. Some other people had attended out of curiosity. As soon as the five convicts were brought in, they had their handcuffs taken off and sat with their lawyers. The judge made them wait an hour and a half before arriving at his judgement. Firoz Khan and Tahir Merchant seemed shocked as they were sentenced to death. Abu Salem - the most notorious - had a small smirk on his face as he was given his life sentence. Portugal only granted his extradition on the condition he would not be given the death penalty.

Seven men were detained between 2003 and 2010 and were tried separately as they were arrested towards the end of a previous trial. A court found six of them guilty in June. One man, Mustafa Dossa, died of cardiac arrest soon after his conviction. One man was acquitted. In 2015, Abu Salem, a key associate of Indian crime lord Dawood Ibrahim, received another life sentence for a 20-year-old murder, which was not connected to the blasts. Yakub Memon, the man convicted of plotting and financing the bombings, was executed in 2015.

History of Mumbai attacks

March 1993: Series of explosions kill 257 people and injure 713
August 2003: Four bomb attacks kill 52 people
July 2006: Seven bombs go off on crowded trains within 11 minutes, killing more than 180 people and wounding hundreds
November 2008: Gunmen carry out a series of co-ordinated attacks across seven high-profile locations, including two luxury hotels, the city's main commuter train station, a hospital, a restaurant and a Jewish centre, killing 165 people. Pakistan-based militants are blamed for the attacks and peace efforts between the two countries are derailed. Nine of the attackers were killed. Pakistani national Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, who was captured alive, hanged in November 2012
July 2011: Three near-simultaneous explosions during Mumbai's evening rush hour kill 18 people and injure 131

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-41183801 (Accessed 23 December 2018)

The Death Penalty Scenario in India

India is one of the 193 countries that retains death penalty. There has always been a few imminent judges who have pronounced compelling verdicts upholding the rights of prisoners on death row. There has been increasing debate in various platforms advocating abolition of death penalty or at least to rethink sentencing policies in India. The Indian government has however always been committed to the retention of the death penalty, irrespective of their political ideology. India has voted against a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) draft resolution on the use of death penalty, saying it goes against the statutory law of the country where an execution is carried out in the "rarest of rare" cases. India retains the death penalty as punishment for a number of crimes including murder, kidnapping, terrorism, desertion, inducement to suicide of a minor or a mentally-retarded person and has more recently in 2013 come to include the offence of rape in certain circumstances. Most recently, there is an outrage over child rape and murder.

After observing an unofficial moratorium of 8 years in India, the Indian Government in November 2012 carried out the execution of Ajmal Kasab, convicted in the Mumbai attacks case, without public knowledge. This was followed by the secret execution of Afzal Guru, convicted in the Parliament attack case of 2001, in February 2013, under similar circumstances, without intimating his immediate family or affording a chance of judicial review. In both cases, the executions were carried out under covert operations conducted by the Government immediately upon rejection of their mercy petitions. Before these executions, the last execution to be carried out in India was that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee in 2004 who was convicted of rape and murder and which sentence was carried out after he had spent 13 years in solitary confinement. Following this, several mercy petitions of death row convicts have come to be rejected. The fear of execution of such convicts is imminent. Bolstered by the Government's unapologetic conduct and public outcry, especially in recent cases of rape and murder reported in the country, the courts are continuing to hand down death sentences at an alarming rate.

In the recent past, there have been a few empirical studies (mainly four) conducted with prisoners on death row. This has highlighted the situation of prisoners on death row.

(1) Most recently the India Exclusion Report 2017-18 found that fair trial rights and guarantees are reduced to a nullity and seeks to breach the citadel of the collective silence. It further said that Convicts on death row in India belong to groups marginalised along the axes of caste, religion, economic vulnerability and educational deprivation, and their fair trial rights, though a part of the Right to Life guaranteed by the Constitution, are invariably non-existent, a survey of 371 out of the 385 persons living under the death sentence and their families has revealed.

(2) Another study was The Death Penalty Research Project (2015) which was conceived with an aim to document the socio-economic profile of prisoners sentenced to death in India and map their experience within the criminal justice system.

There were two other academic studies that were done conducted by Dr. Reena Mary George –

(3)“Voices of prisoners surviving the death row in India” (2014) done through the University of Vienna under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Christoph Reinprecht (Sociology) and Prof. Dr. Manfred Nowak (Law and Ex-United Nations Rapporteur on Torture). George’s research highlights three salient features, namely: poverty, social exclusion and marginalisation are antecedent to death penalty; death penalty is a constructed account by the state machinery; and prisoners on death row situate dignity higher in the juxtaposition of death and dignity.

(4) Another one “Death Penalty – A Human Rights Perspective” (2009) done through the University of Mumbai under the guidance of Retired Justice Hosbet Suresh. This was a study in Maharashtra with the objectives to firstly study the impact of death penalty on the social, mental, and physical being of the inmate and secondly, to study the perception of opinion leaders on death penalty with reference to human rights. All the above reports are public documents.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Prison Statistics 2015, there are 101 prisoners sentenced to death. The actual figure of sentences originally awarded is much higher considering the death sentences of 49 convicts came to be commuted to life imprisonment in the said period. As of today, almost in 2019, the figures are unknown through government statistics, however, research centres claim this figure to be around 371 convicts. During the 1980s the Supreme Court sought to restrict the use of the death penalty by characterizing it as a punishment reserved only for the “rarest of the rare” cases. The doctrine has not had the desired effect. According to a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, Rajindar Sachar: “after the rarest of rare doctrine was introduced in 1980, the Supreme Court confirmed death penalty in 40 per cent of cases in the period 1980-90 while it was 37.7 per cent between 1970 and 1980. For the high courts it rose from 59 per cent in 1970-80 to 65 per cent during 1980-90”. Over the past two decades the death penalty has been extended to include more crimes and been handed down with increasing frequency.

Most recently while commuting a sentence in Supreme Court (2018), Justice Joseph did not seek the reconsideration of the Bachan Singh judgment, but only sought to re-examine the purpose and practice of the death penalty, and whether as a punishment, it serves any goal at all. In other words, the death penalty can continue to remain constitutionally valid because of the Bachan Singh judgment, but its application in substantive cases coming before the court must be restricted to only those cases which meet the criteria laid down in that case.

While updating the blog and conducting my own empirical studies, I observed the heinous nature of the crimes that were committed and thought about the families, about their loss, about the victims who for no fault of their own died. If I lost my relative or a dear friend, would I still oppose death penalty and would I still advocate to abolish the death sentence? Having worked in the criminal justice system and also having the seen the other side, where often it is the marginalized, vulnerable and oppressed who are on death row makes me want to advocate for abolition of this punishment. Victims should definitely get justice for their loss, for their pain. No one should escape the rule of law. As long as humanity exists; crime will exist. Should we not re-consider our sentencing policies?

Reena Mary George