Afzal Guru’s hanging : A Year After
Denied fair trial, hanged without evidence and despite reasonable doubt
In the year 2002, Afzal Guru was sentenced to death on flimsy grounds and without any evidence. Over a decade later, on 9 Feb, 2013 he was hanged in complete secrecy. His mercy petition had been rejected and he was hanged in an extreme hurry without even informing his family. After about a year, deciding on petitions filed by 15 death row convicts, on 21st Jan 2014 the Supreme Court of India framed guidelines regarding death penalty which include, among others, that death sentences should be commuted to life sentence in case of inordinate delay in deciding on the mercy petition. Afzal Guru was hanged despite a decade of delay in deciding on his death penalty. Why was this principle – evoked now by the Supreme Court – not applied to the Afzal Guru case? Had the Supreme Court framed these guidelines earlier, Afzal Guru would be alive today.
Double Standards of ‘Justice’ : When we look at the Afzal Guru case in the light of the Supreme Court’s guidelines, then it is apparent that his execution is a glaring case of double standards of ‘justice.’
Guru’s execution was wrong on several levels. First and foremost is the entire question of death penalty itself. India continues to be one of the very few democracies which still award the barbaric death penalty. Second, the death penalty should not be awarded if guilt is not established beyond reasonable doubt. The scope of doubt in this case was immense. In fact, there was no evidence against Afzal Guru. Third, the decision to execute him in complete secrecy was an act of political expediency by the discredited UPA – II government. The execution reeks of competitive jingoism in view of the rising Modi wave. Fourth is the fact that Afzal Guru was denied a chance to file a review petition! This is clearly unlawful and further confirms the fact that the UPA was merely trying to appear ‘strong’ by hanging Guru even at the cost of lawful procedure. Fifth, his family was not even informed that his review petition had been rejected. The 21st Jan judgment clearly mentions that a person who is to be executed should be allowed to meet his family.
Political double standards too abound. Today, many parties – including the Akali Dal (close ally of BJP) and AAP – call rightly for commutation of the death sentence of Devinder Singh Bhullar, convicted in a blast case, quoting the Supreme Court guidelines. The same parties, however, hail the execution of Afzal Guru! The people demanding revocation of Bhullar’s (or Rajoana’s) death sentence are NOT subjected to hate speech, curfews, and violence, unlike Kashmiris who mourn the death of Afzal. We must keep reminding ourselves that in this country, death penalty has not been awarded to the perpetrators of the 1984 Sikh riots, to the murderers and rapists of the 2002 Gujarat genocide, to the accused in the Bathani Tola massacre, to the killers in Khairlanji or to the killers of Graham Staines. In many of these cases, the perpetrators roam free, protected from any punishment.
Some of the unanswered questions:
The judicial proceedings recorded two occasions on which Mohammad Afzal spoke before the law: his ‘confessional’ statement before the police and his statement under ‘Section 313 of the CrPC’. The Supreme court verdict itself admits Afzal’s much publicized ‘confession’ which was extracted in police custody was ‘UNRELIABLE’. But after the Supreme Court rejected the prosecution’s theory based on Afzal’s ‘confession’, the latter’s CrPC 313 statement was the only basis left on which his role in events that led to the attack could be probed. The Court has found his only role in it was to help a man suspected to be involved in the Parliament attack, to find a house in Delhi and to buy a car. Afzal never denied or falsified this role rather admitted it.In his statement he, in fact, named an STF officer Davinder Singh who ordered him to perform those acts. Yet, Davinder Singh was mentioned neither in the FIR nor chargesheet, nor was he made a witness in the case. He did not figure anywhere in the trials, despite the presence of his phone numbers in Afzal’s phone records. How come the Supreme Court chose to believe one part of Afzal’s statement under Section 313, while conveniently ignored the rest? Why wasn’t the link with the STF probed?
After the Parliament attack, a former Police Commissioner of Thane S.M. Shangari, claimed in a press conference that one of the killed terrorist (Abu Hamza) had been arrested in Maharashtra in December 2000 along with three others (one year before the Parliament house attack) and had subsequently been handed over to the J&K Police. Therefore at the time of the Parliament house attack. Abu Hamza was supposedly in the custody of the J&K police. However, K Rajendra, then inspector general of the J&K Police, dismissed Shangari’s enquiries calling it a case of mistaken identity and arguing that Hamza is a common Muslim name. Perhaps so. But then what happened to those four militants including Abu Hamza in J&K STF custody? The Thane court issued repeated summons to the J&K Police to produce them in Thane. They were never sent nor any explanation provided! WHY? (See Mihir Srivastava,The Question of Reasonable Doubt,The Open Magazine 14/2/13)
The so-called ‘masterminds’ behind the attack (Masood Azhar, Ghazi Baba and Tariq Ahmad) were never arrested and produced in any court, to verify the prosecution’s story. Of these, Ghazi Baba was claimed to be shot dead by security forces in 2004. Then, where is Tariq? Why can’t the STF produce him? After Kasab’s arrest, we saw a flurry of diplomatic exchange, with India providing proof of Pakistan’s involvement, demanding extraditions and so on. WHY didn’t we see a similar diplomatic exchange demanding that these three be produced in Indian courts?
And finally, the big question that the Indian State must answer: Afzal being a surrendered militant was under constant State surveillance. Could a man constantly watched by our security forces, and who, even according to the Court, did not belong to any terrorist organisation at the time of Parliament attack, manage to execute a terrorist attack of such magnitude? If a person under the watchful eye of the STF could be part of a conspiracy to wage war against the state, how can anything less than a public inquiry do? For this is not about the guilt or innocence of one man, but about how a system works and what it means, to democracy, sovereignty and the security of the state. Whose pawn was he really?
It is true that the attack on Parliament was most highly condemnable and an assault on what is known as the highest seat of our democracy. Precisely because of this, it was imperative that the police and investigation agencies should have carried out an honest investigation to book the perpetrators. Instead, what did we get? The Supreme Court, while admitting that there is no direct evidence of Afzal’s guilt, has held that he must die to satisfy the ‘collective conscience’ of the Indian nation. It was almost as if there was a need to at least ensure one death sentence so that the faith of the public in the efficacy of the prosecution and the judiciary and the Legislature would not be shaken. A range of Indian citizens – teachers, writers, lawyers, Gandhian and Left activists, ordinary people – have raised their voice to declare that they are NOT part of this contrived ‘collective conscience’. Truly, the conscience of democratic and peace-loving citizens can be satisfied only if there is a guarantee that there is no witch-hunting or scape-goating, and those really guilty for terror and genocide are identified and punished.
