Mumbai attack: Will Ajmal Kasab ever be hanged?

Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins have defied the noose for 18 years, so has Afzal Guru, the prime accused in the 2001 Parliament attack case. Given this backdrop, will Ajmal Kasab ever be hanged?


By M. Gautham Machaiah

“Whatever I have done, I have done on earth, and I should be punished here. I do not want to be punished by God. Please punish me by hanging,” Ajmal Kasab, the prime accused in the terror attacks on Mumbai has told the trial court. But given the Indian legal system, it might take at least a decade to hang him. That is, if the court awards him capital punishment.

For Kasab, it is a long way to the noose. Once the trial court pronounces its order, Kasab’s advocate will approach the High Court and subsequently the Supreme Court. Assuming that the trial court condemns him to death and Supreme Court confirms it, he still has one more lifeline—filing a mercy petition before the President of India.

If history is any indication, Kasab may succeed in defying the gallows even for the next 20 years. Take for instance the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The former Prime Minister was killed by a suicide bomber in 1991 and his assassins who were condemned to death are yet to be hanged even 18 years later.

The assassination trial took six long years and in 1998, all the 26 accused were sentenced to death. As the accused were booked under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), where the court of appeal was the Supreme Court, a long pending appeal before the High Court could be avoided. In 1999, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of four of the 26 accused.

The four who were convicted to death filed a mercy petition before the President, who is yet to take a decision. Meanwhile, the death penalty of one of the accused, Nalini who had become a mother while in prison, was commuted to life imprisonment after Congress president Sonia Gandhi pleaded for clemency.

The remaining three continue to remain on the death row. If the assassins of a former Prime Minister can escape the noose for nearly two decades, it is difficult to believe that Kasab will see his end in the near future.

A parallel may be drawn between Kasab and Mohammed Afzal Guru, convicted for his role in the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. Guru’s trial was relatively speedy when compared to that of Rajiv Gandhi. He was awarded the death sentence by a trial court in 2002, which was upheld by the Delhi High Court in 2003 and confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2005.

In 2006, Guru’s wife filed a mercy petition before the President, which continues to hang fire even to this day.

Only in the case of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination was the entire process of appeal exhausted in about five years. Indira Gandhi was shot dead in 1984, while her assassins were executed in 1986.

The opposition BJP has been demanding that Afzal Guru’s mercy petition be rejected and that he be hanged immediately. But the Government does not seem to be in any hurry.

Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily has said that Afzal Guru is twenty second in the list of 28 mercy petitions pending before the Government. “You cannot pick and choose and hang people in a country which believes in the rule of law,” is his argument.

Thus, Afzal Guru will have to wait his turn. Meanwhile, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has announced that he will attend to one mercy petition every month. This means it will take at least another two years before the Home Minister even has a look at Guru’s file. It is anybody’s guess when he will be hanged, if at all.

There has been a demand from citizens and a section of politicians that cases involving terrorism should be fast tracked, instead of following the queue system. But in India, political expediency takes precedence over national security.

And who knows, one day Kasab may walk a free man!

(Picture sourced from: bajan.wordpress.com)

COMMENTS

Nice blog on Kasab! But I think they should just let him go. Who are we to punish him? We have no right to take somone's life! Yes, He killed all those people. But if we turn around and kill him - then what is the difference between him and us?
-Sindhu M.C., New Jersey

I agree with you. This is what I have written in my blog, sangeethvinayakan.blogspot.com. But unlike me, you have done it well. Jai Bharath!
-Sangeeth Vinayakan