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1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon hanged

Posted in Featured, S. Asia

Published on July 31, 2015 with No Comments

·   Executed on his birthday

·   Body handed over to his brothers

·   In a midnight hearing SC rejected Yakub Memon’s plea to    stall execution

Over 22 years after the 1993 Mumbai blasts, Yakub Memon, the sole convict on death row, was hanged on his 53rd birthdayon Thursday after failure of last-gasp efforts by his counsels to stall the execution that led the Supreme Court to hear his plea in the wee hours before throwing it out.

Memon, whom the Supreme Court had described as the “driving spirit” behind the worst terror assault till date that left 257 dead and 713 wounded, was hanged at the Nagpur Central Jail shortly before 7 am, just about two hours after his last-ditch attempt to gain reprieve came to naught. Memon, a chartered accountant by profession, who was handed death sentence in 2007 had reacted to the verdict by quoting Jesus Christ and said, “Forgive them Lord for they don’t know what they do.”

In an unprecedented hearing held at the Supreme Court at 3 a.m. on Thursday, the court rejected Yakub Memon’s plea seeking postponement of his hanging by 14 days.

The apex court bench comprising Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Prafulla C Pant and Justice Amitava Roy post-midnight rejected Memon’s plea seeking 14 days’ time before the execution of his death sentence is carried out.

The court said that “the petitioner did not raise any question when earlier, the mercy petition by his brother was rejected by the president in 2014”.

Memon had challenged the rejection of his mercy petition by the president.

His mercy petition was earlier rejected by the president on Wednesday, wherein, he raised fresh grounds for clemency — commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment.

The apex court bench, while rejecting Memon’s latest plea, observed that there was nothing new in the new petition as it was a repetition of the same argument that was advanced on Wednesday.

“Same thing was there in Wednesday petition. There is nothing new in the new petition,” Justice Misra is reported to have said. in the course of the hearing.

Justice Misra headed the three-judges bench of the Supreme Court which had on Wednesday rejected Memon’s plea seeking stay of his execution and quashing of the death warrant.

Saying that Memon was given “ample opportunity” to present his case before the apex court, the bench said that he was heard for 10 days in the course of the hearing of his review petition while law mandates per half an hour hearing.”Ample opportunity was given to him to present his case in the hearing of the review petition,” the court said.

Addressing the court, senior counsel Anand Grover said that Memon should get 14 days’ time after the rejection of his mercy petition, which was a matter of right given by the court in the well-known Shatrughan Chauhan case.

The court was told that Memon wanted to challenge the president’s decision to reject his mercy petition in which he has raised fresh grounds including his mental health related to his schizophrenia. Grover said that his client did not even get time to execute his will.

Contesting Memon’s plea, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said that this way there would be a mercy petition every day and repeated mercy petition was bad for the system.

Contending that Memon has exhausted all the legal avenues, the attorney general said that the mercy petition should have been filed before the issuance of the death warrant.

As per reports from India, Yakub Memon, had reacted with an angry outburst saying “innocent people are being called terrorists” when a TADA court here had pronounced him guilty on September 12, 2006. After hearing the verdict, he had said, “We do not want to engage lawyers to argue on quantum of sentence…13 years have passed and innocent people are being called terrorists,”

“We have already been branded as terrorists and shall face the consequences,” said Yakub, the younger brother of absconding accused Tiger Memon, when he was convicted along with his brothers Essa and Yusuf by designated Judge P D Kode

 

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