Rejected Afzal Guru’s mercy plea on government’s advice: Pranab Mukherjee

Updated: Oct 20, 2017 22:18 IST

Aurangzeb Naqshbandi

Hindustan Times, New Delhi

Former president Pranab Mukherjee said on Friday he rejected Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru’s mercy petition on advice from the government as he could not have assumed the role of the court which had already considered the death sentence at various stages.

Mukherjee, who is against the continuation of the death sentence, also insisted that it was for lawmakers to amend the law and abolish capital punishment, which is in the Indian Penal Code. During his tenure from 2012 to 2017, Mukherjee rejected 30 mercy pleas. “Before a mercy petition comes to the President, it passes through various stages and different actions had already been taken. The President goes by the advice of the government,” he told HT in an interview. “If the government advises rejection of the mercy petition, the President naturally will go by that. The President cannot assume the role of the court which had already considered the death sentence at various stages.”

Ex- Indian President Pranab Mukherjee (2012 - 2017)

A trial court sentenced Afzal, then studying medicine, to death on December 18, 2002, for his role in the terror attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001. The Delhi high court later confirmed the sentence, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2004. The sentence was to be carried out on October 20, 2006 in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, but a mercy petition by the family to the President stayed it. Guru was finally hanged in Tihar Jail on February 9, 2013 after Mukherjee rejected his mercy petition on February 3 that year. “I did not believe in keeping the files without taking any action. I disposed them off and accepted the government’s recommendations to reject mercy petitions except in 1 or 2 cases where I discussed with the then home minister and both of us agreed on commuting the death sentence. Rest all, I confirmed,” he said.

Afzal Guru, executed 09 February 2013

Speaking about Kashmir, he said the situation “definitely requires undivided attention” of all those concerned. “We were able to manage the situation during UPA-I and UPA-II. Similarly, this government is also making efforts. Let us see how the situation develops and how problems are resolved.” “More than often the secessionist elements take advantage by constantly launching agitations but we shall have to resolve the issue with the cooperation of the people and the government in Jammu and Kashmir,” he added. Asked about the revival of Congress, he said the party has the “capacity to face the situation, tackle adversities and come out with ideas and principles”. “...whenever there is crisis the party had the capacity to overcome that. I have no doubt that Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders and workers will be able to overcome the crisis and Congress will play its own role.”

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/rejected-afzal-guru-s-mercy-plea-on-government-s-advice-pranab-mukherjee/story-8Y6pgE86jbtQz4kk3OoKPL.html (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Family of Kashmiri on Death Row Hopes for Relief (West Bengal)

Amin Masoodi

Srinagar, India

2017-02-06

Relatives of an alleged militant from Indian Kashmir said Monday they would appeal a death sentence and verdict handed to him last month by a court in West Bengal state.

Muzaffar Ahmad Rather – a 27-year-old from Kulgam district in south Kashmir – was convicted on Jan. 21 along with Pakistani nationals Mohammad Abdullah and Mohammed Yunus on charges related to waging war against India as alleged members of militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The three were arrested in 2007 while trying to enter India from Bangladesh. The accused had received weapons training in Pakistan and planned to carry out terror attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said.

But Rather’s family refuted police claims, saying authorities had falsely implicated him. “The verdict has shocked us. We are in the process of arranging funds so we can appeal the verdict in the High Court. We are hoping the High Court will not only overturn the verdict but also order his release,” Rather’s brother Mohammad Shafi, a daily wage laborer, told BenarNews.

“Even the police concede that they found no arms or ammunition on him. So how can they claim he was planning terror strikes?” he said. Rather went missing in 2002, his father Abdul Majid, also a laborer, said, adding they found out about his 2007 arrest through the media. Last month, Rather’s family saw him for the first time since he disappeared 14 years ago, when they visited him in prison. His relatives said they didn’t know what led to his disappearence when he was around 15 years old. “For nearly 10 years he has been locked up in prison and now they want to hang him. This isn’t right. I don’t believe that my son is a terrorist,” Majid told BenarNews.

Muzaffar Ahmad Rather is seen in an undated photograph taken before he went missing in 2002.

Appropriate punishment?

Rather’s defense counsel said their appeal against the verdict, which evoked protests across Kashmir, would likely come up for hearing later this month. “I argued desperately before the judge that the prosecution had failed to prove their charges against Rather and he should be released. But I was shocked that the court still handed him capital punishment,” Sabroata Basu, Rather’s lawyer, told BenarNews by phone from Kolkata. “The prosecution admitted in court that they did not find any incriminating material from the client and that charges of waging war were levelled on the basis of suspicion. I am quite confident the High Court will overturn the verdict and release him unconditionally,” Basu said.

The three accused were booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging, or attempting to wage war) and 122 (collecting arms with intention of waging war against the government of India), according to Nishad Pervej, West Bengal police’s deputy inspector general. “They are members of Lashkar-e-Taiba and were planning attacks on army camps in Jammu and Kashmir,” Pervej told a news conference. The Himalayan region of Kashmir, claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan, has been in the midst of a separatist insurgency that has claimed over 70,000 lives since the late 1980s.

Militants killed

Over the weekend, two suspected militants were killed in a firefight that broke out when government forces intercepted a vehicle the suspects were riding in, police said. “We intercepted their vehicle near Sopore on the main highway. They lobbed grenades at the forces and were killed in retaliatory fire,” Superintendent of Police Imtiyaz Hussain told Agence France-Presse. Two police officers, including member of a special anti-militancy group, were injured in Saturday’s incident, Hussain said.

Following a shutdown call by separatists in response to the verdict in Rather’s case, several thousand anti-India protesters took to the streets to accuse the Indian government of falsely implicating Kashmiri youths in criminal cases. “The verdict is against the internationally accepted norms of justice,” senior separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told BenarNews. “It is unfortunate that the Indian judiciary has once against demonstrated miscarriage of justice. We reiterate our demand of the unconditional release of Muzaffar Ahmad Rather and all political prisoners languishing in Indian prisons,” Farooq said.

Source: https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/bengali/death-row-02062017123733.html (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Indian SC stays killer Ikhwani’s execution

Srinagar, July 05 (KMS): The Supreme Court of India has stayed the execution of death sentence of an Ikhwani (government gunman) who was awarded lifer by a court of occupied Kashmir for murdering five persons, including four of a family, in north Kashmir in 1997.A Division Bench of the apex court comprising Justices Dipak Misra and V Gopala Gowda stayed the death sentence of Ghulam Mohi-ud-Din Wani.

According to the case details, Wani, who was working with Indian army, had barged into the house of Mohammad Yousuf Ganai at village Vilkal in Kupwara on March 16, 1997, and opened indiscriminate fire on the inmates. Yousuf Ganai, his wife and two children were killed in the firing. Wani had then barged into another house in the neighbourhood and shot dead a policeman, Mohammad Ishaq. He was convicted by the Kupwara Sessions Court in August 2009 and sentenced to death.

Subsequently, he had filed an appeal against the judgment before the High Court of occupied Kashmir that had upheld the verdict of Kupwara Sessions Court. Later, he had moved the Indian Supreme Court against it.

Source: http://www.kmsnews.org/news/2014/07/05/indian-sc-stays-killer-ikhwanis-execution.html [last accessed 06.02.2015]

Rajiv’s Killers Versus Afzal Guru

SRINAGAR, WEDNESDAY, 25 RABI-AL-THANI 1435 ; 26 FEBRUARY 2014 CE 

- RIYAZ AHMAD

The contrast also compares the two democracies, Tamil Nadu, J&K.

There were two developments that riveted our attention last week. And the mayhem in the state Assembly was not one of them despite the injury to a PDP legislator or the slapping of a marshal by one of the party’s legislators. One, was the commutation of the death sentence of the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s killers to the life imprisonment by the Apex Court. And second the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha’s decision to release all the seven of them and the ensuing confrontation with centre. The clash made for a gripping political drama and heady television. But Kashmir was hooked for a different reason. 

One, that the killers of a former prime minister of India and a member of the ruling dynasty who were on death row for the past eleven years were granted a due recourse to law and their plea accepted by the court. Second, Tamil Nadu CM dramatically deciding to set them free and setting a three day deadline for the centre to respond. 

New Delhi went into a tizzy, objecting to the release. Supreme Court stayed the move but that was not what was important. The important thing was that even the killers of a prime minister of India, if they are not from Kashmir, can expect not only a fairer process of justice but even clemency with a Chief Minister’s support to boot. Contrast this with what happened to Muhammad Afzal Guru who, by Apex Court’s own order had a circumstantial link to the parliament attack. So he had to die to “satisfy the collective consciousness” of India. He was pulled out of the death row queue where he was at around number 30 and sent to gallows without his family getting a wind of it. He was told about the rejection of his mercy petition by the president only an hour before his death. And his mortal remains continue to be withheld from his family. 

And all the political class in the state has behaved as if they could do little about it. More so, the Chief Minister whose response has veered from publicly complaining about his advise against hanging being ignored by the centre to being kept in dark about the hanging itself. And ever since CM may have issued statements against the hanging, warned of a fallout in Kashmir and Afzal’s long term iconization for the new generation of Kashmiri youth, even seeking his mortal remains but there has never been an occasion when he has made us confident of his will or ability to do something about it. 

Unlike Tamil Nadu government, his government couldn’t get up the courage to pass the resolution on Afzal and nor does his government build a pressure or even make a case for the return of Afzal’s mortal remains. The truth is that behind the CM’s Afzal outrage – honestly felt or politically dictated – there has been a little veiled squeamishness about being too strongly identified with him. But no such defensiveness for Jayalalitha. Not also for Badal, who has BJP as an ally. Rajiv’s and Beant Singh’s killers respectively are not only an opportunity for political posturing and playing to their constituencies but also for some credible action which forces centre to rethink and revise its decision. 

The point here is not to fan an already deep sense of victimhood in Kashmir but to highlight a persisting democratic paradox in the state: the inability of the so called democratic representatives to adequately represent, respond or even play to the legitimate grievances and sentiments of their people. True, mainstream politics in the state cannot project the sentiment of Azadi but this was also never expected of them. Majority of the people who vote for them are conscious of this fact. But what they want from them is not only to deliver the good governance but also fight for their interests and rights and take an unambiguous stand when New Delhi seems to have discriminated against the state. 

And not only talk about it in no uncertain terms but be seen to act to undo it. But what we get is either apathy, a cryptic silence, may be sometimes a statement or two expressing an opinion or simply a show of silence. If anything, the case of Rajiv’s killers exposes the democracy in the state for what it is always suspected to be – a government by the people but obliged to if not representative of New Delhi. 

Source: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2014/Feb/26/rajiv-s-killers-versus-afzal-guru-8.asp [accessed 24 April 2014]

74% of the mercy petitions were rejected by Presidents of India since 1981

74% of the mercy petitions were rejected by Presidents of India since 1981

ACHR condemns arbitrary rejection of mercy pleas of 9 death-row convicts

New Delhi: Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) in its press release today stated that President Pranab Mukherjee has reduced the President’s Office to a rubber stamp of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) while rejecting mercy pleas of the death-row convicts as per the advice of the MHA. The President has yesterday rejected mercy pleas in five cases while commuting death sentence in two cases as advised by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

As per the RTI information provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs to the Asian Centre for Human Rights on 28 March 2013 (available at http://www.achrweb.org/press/2013/Mercypetitions.pdf), as on 28th March 2013, nine mercy petitions were pending before the President of India and these include death-row convicts Jafar Ali (Uttar Pradesh), Dharam Pal (Haryana) Praveen Kumar (Karnataka), Sonia and Sanjeev (Haryana), Sunder Singh (Uttarakhand), Shivu and Jadeswamy (Karnataka) and B A Umesh (Karnataka), Balwant Singh Rajoana (Chandigarh) and Manganlal (Madhya Pradesh).

“The case of life and death as per Article 72 of the Constitution must not be decided without objective criteria and therefore, the criteria for considering the mercy pleas must be developed to avoid arbitrariness in life and death matters. ” – stated Mr Suhas Chakma, Director of Asian Centre for Human Rights.

As per the RTI information provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs to the Asian Centre for Human Rights on 28 March 2013, since the Supreme Court laid down the rarest of rare case doctrine in the Bachan Singh Vs State of Punjab case, the Presidents of India had considered 112 mercy pleas since 1981 to 4 April 2013, out of which 83 mercy petitions or 74% of the mercy petitions were rejected while mercy pleas of only 31 death row-convicts were commuted to life imprisonment.

ACHR called upon the Government of India to abolish death penalty.

Source: http://kashmirwatch.com/humanrights.php/2013/04/05/74-of-the-mercy-petitions-were-rejected-by-presidents-of-india-since-1981.html (accessed on 5th April 2013)

Death anniversary: Kashmiri freedom fighter remembered

MIRPUR: The 28th death anniversary of Muhammad Maqbool Butt, a leader of the Kashmir Freedom Movement, was observed on Saturday on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) with a renewed pledge to continue his mission till the achievement of the right of self-determination.

Processions were taken out to pay tribute to Butt who was awarded the death sentence by India. He was hanged on February 11, 1984, in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail for demanding the birthright of self determination for the people of Jammu and Kashmir state under the UN resolutions and the liberation of Kashmir from Indian subjugation.

Speakers called upon the international community to exert pressure on India to immediately hand over Butt’s dead body to his family members. Speakers said that Butt’s sacrifice infused a new spirit among Kashmiris to accelerate their struggle for the achievement of their fundamental right of self-determination denied by India for the past 63 years.

Speakers also demanded the immediate demilitarisation of Indian-held Kashmir, unconditional release of all political detainees and repeal of black laws. Speakers appreciated the opening of routes across the LoC by India and Pakistan and demanded the revival of all other natural routes to enable the free movement of Kashmiris from either side without any discrimination.

Earlier, hundreds of activists of JKNLF, JKLF, Plebiscite Front, NSF and other social and political organisations took out a torch-bearing procession from Shaheed Chowk on Friday night, to highlight the contribution of the martyred Kashmiri leader to the freedom struggle.

The participants of the rally lit candles in memory of Kashmiri martyrs. Speakers urged the world community to help stop massive human rights abuses in Indian-held Kashmir. Across the LoC, Butt’s death was marked with a complete strike across the held valley.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12th, 2012.
Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/335155/death-anniversary-kashmiri-freedom-fighter-remembered/ accessed on 13th February 2012

Kashmiri on Death Row Galvanises Opposition to Death Penalty

By Sana Altaf

SRINAGAR, India, Oct 10, 2011 (IPS) - "Is Afzal Guru really the person that so many Indians supposedly want dead? Or are they taking out their frustrations on an easy target?" asked Human Rights Watch, referring to the death sentence handed down to the Kashmiri man who was convicted of conspiracy in the 2001 suicide attack on the Indian Parliament.

"For many, Afzal bears the burden of representing all those who dare to oppose Indian rule in restive parts of the country, because the attack on Parliament was an attack on India," said the statement by Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia researcher for global rights watchdog HRW.

"Conversely, many Kashmiris would say that Afzal is a freedom fighter, planning an attempt at the symbol of Indian oppression," adds the statement, titled ‘Life, Not Death: Why Afzal Mustn’t Hang’. "Both views are flawed. For this multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural state to survive, Indians have to believe in equal justice for all. And in the case of Jammu and Kashmir, there has been consistent failure to deliver on this promise."

A Kashmiri, supported by a wife who is a doctor and a lone teenage son, Mohammad Afzal, commonly called Afzal Guru, was found guilty of conspiracy in the attack on parliament which killed more than a dozen people. He was given the death penalty, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2004.

The sentence was to be carried out in 2006, but the execution was stayed following a mercy plea filed by Afzal Guru.

Although most nations across the globe – a total of 139 – have abolished the death penalty, India continues the practice, as the World Day Against the Death Penalty once again rolled around on Oct. 10.

India joined 53 other countries to vote against the December 2007 United Nations General Assembly moratorium on executions, passed with 104 votes in favour and 29 abstentions. However, Indian judges generally follow the 1983 Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty may be resorted to only in the "rarest of rare cases".

Afzal’s death penalty has not gone down well amongst various quarters in Kashmir. The separatist leaders view it as an unjust step, which would endanger the political situation in Kashmir

"I am completely against execution of Afzal Guru. He didn’t get a fair trial. Hanging him would be pure human rights violation," said Shabir Ahmad Shah, the chairman of the Democratic Freedom Party, a separatist organisation.

He says that Afzal’s hanging could have a negative impact on the situation in Kashmir. "When Maqbool Bhat was hanged in India’s Tihar jail in 1984, it was followed by insurgency. And if Afzal is also hanged, it will as well result in dangerous consequences," Shabir told IPS. "People would surely come on streets and protest against it as no Kashmiri wants his hanging."

The unrest in Kashmir has its roots back in 1947, when Britain granted India independence and the Muslim-dominated areas became part of Pakistan. A U.N. resolution, meantime, gave Kashmiris the option to join either Hindu-dominated India or Pakistan or to become independent. But Kashmiris had no chance to make a choice as their homeland is claimed by both India and Pakistan.

Roughly a third of modern-day Kashmir is administered by Pakistan while the rest is under India. But many Kashmiris challenge this, and protesters living on the Indian side rose up in arms in 1989 in an insurgency that simmers to this day.

Saying Afzal did not get a fair trial, Sajjad Lone, another separatist leader, said intellectuals, NGOs and civil society in general needs to stand up against Afzal’s execution, which he said "will not suit the people of Kashmir."

Hardline separatist leader of Kashmir Syed Ali Shah Geelani warned of "dire consequences" if Afzal Guru is hanged, saying in a statement in August that "it will unleash a storm."

Human rights activists and organisations have also criticised Afzal's death sentence, which they see as a human rights abuse.

"Afzal Guru's case is being adjudicated upon in terms of its politics, not in relation to the violations of process and hearing that have taken place. The death penalty has no place in a democracy," said Angana Chatterji, a professor of social and cultural anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, and the co-convener of the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir.

Chatterji says despite the international movement to abolish capital punishment and the 2007 U.N. moratorium on executions, "India continues to impose the (death) penalty. The allocation of capital punishment continues to be influenced by racism, ethnocentrism, and class prejudice, authorising the state to act against a person's right to life."

Kashmir-based human rights activist Khurram Parvez, a co-founder of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), says the sentence handed down to Afzal was not based on a fair trial.

"If anyone reads that judgment, one would come to know that he was pronounced guilty on secondary evidence. No direct evidence was produced in the court against Afzal Guru," Parvez told IPS.

Citing the Supreme Court sentence, he said it states that "the incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, has shaken the entire nation and the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender."

"When there is no evidence against Afzal, why should he be hanged? To satisfy the collective conscience of society, it appears India needs a sacrifice," Parvez added.

Advocate Faisal Qadri said the death penalty should be abolished in India. "I am completely against the death penalty. It is the worst kind of human rights violation. Humans have no right to kill anyone, even if it is a criminal."

And Qadri argued that in Afzal Guru’s case, capital punishment is completely unjustified: "Even India’s own leading lawyers admit that Afzal was not given a fair trial."

For ordinary people, the sentence handed to Afzal is a manifestation of India’s bias against Kashmiris.

"The Indian system is biased against Kashmiri people…there are scores of innocent Kashmiri youth who are arrested on the basis of mere suspicion and put behind bars for years with no evidence. How can we expect India to be just to Afzal?" said Iqbal (who provided only one name).

"Whenever any Kashmiri is found involved in any wrong act, India has to act in an unjust manner. That has been India's policy towards Kashmir," says Amina Maqbool, a political science student from the University of Kashmir

The HRW statement says the group "unequivocally opposes the death penalty. Guilty or not, we believe that neither Mohammad Afzal Guru, nor (law student) Priyadarshini Mattoo’s killer, Santosh Kumar Singh, nor (former Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein, nor anyone else, should be executed.

"Taking the life of a human being is inherently cruel, and as a form of punishment is unique in its irreversibility. The intrinsic fallibility of all criminal justice systems assures that even when there is a fair judicial process, innocent persons will still be executed. On a practical level, there is no evidence that it is an effective deterrent," it adds. (END)

Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105411
Accessed on 12th October 2011