From: [email protected] To: 29 Jul 2015Hindustan Times (Mumbai)SU J ATA AN A N DA N , PO L I T I C A L ED I T O R [email protected] As I write this, I do not know if Yakub Memon will be hanged tomorrow (July 30) or granted mercy. But of one thing I am sure – his faith in the Indian system of justice has been betrayed by the politics surrounding the serial blasts of 1993. There was a remarkable statement that Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had made when he visited Bombay soon after the blasts – there is no point in punishing the hands alone. We have to get at the brains. Having reported on the blasts as they happened and having followed the case over the years, I am certain Yakub was not the brain – not even the hands. He was just unlucky enough to be the brother of the brains – and the manager of Tiger Memon’s silver smuggling business. And so far, no one appreciates the fact that had it not been for Yakub’s leap of faith in Indian jurisprudence, we would never have been able to establish the complicity of Pakistan in that case. I had no sympathy for Ajmal Kasab when he was arrested – he was Pakistani, besides that fact, he had done little to help establish his country’s guilt in the 26/11 attacks, except to have lived long enough to speak the truth. I was not among the lynch mob who clamoured for his execution, without even a summary trial, because I did not want my country to be counted among the banana republics who execute people at mere whims and fancies. But I was very satisfied when he was quietly hanged in Yerawada prison in Pune.T hen chief minister Prithviraj Chavan told me his toughest task had been to keep the intention of hanging Kasab under wraps for nearly a fortnight. “We were so afraid word of it would leak to the media and somebody would rush to court and get a stay order and we would have to begin the process all over again.” Similar was the quietness with which Afzal Guru was executed – even though there was an inimical CM (Omar Abdullah) who had to be taken into confidence, then Union home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde managed to extract silence from the Jammu and Kashmir government. It is a measure of the immaturity of both the NDA government at the Centre and the Maharashtra government, that they felt compelled to announce the imminent execution of Yakub. Of course, that has opened the doors to exactly what Chavan was afraid of in the case of Kasab. But, under the circumstances, I think it might be just as well. For, obviously, there seems to have been a breach of promise to Yakub by successive governments and investigating agencies – many reports suggest that even then Union Home Minister SB Chavan had admitted had it not been for Tiger Memon’s brother, India could never have established Pakistan’s hands and brains in the blasts. That, I do believe, is a mitigating circumstance. But, that apart, I wish to ask what about those involved in the preceding 1992- 93 riots ? FIRs were registered against many, yet only one Sena leader ever had to pay for his crime –Madhukar Sarpotdar, who did not even kill anyone, but was caught with arms and ammunition in a notified area. For a similar crime, film star Sanjay Dutt has gone to jail for five years; Sarpotdar’s one year sentence was suspended. So, while I think Salman Khan, too, should go to jail – in the drink driving case– I do not quite agree with his victimisation by the BJP and the Shiv Sena, who are demanding his arrest merely because he has articulated exactly what a very erudite prime minister of India did – we must get the brains (Tiger and Dawood Ibrahim), there is no point being satisfied with just cutting off the hands. Unless that happens, I do not see how Indian justice will be served in full measure. ========29 Jul 2015Hindustan Times (Mumbai)SMRUTI KOPPIKARSelective pursuit of justice for Mumbai’s victims I n the public narrative around Yakub Memon’s f ate, a narrative that gets shriller by the day as the date set for his execut i on nears, t wo strands often get entangled. One is his role in the March 1993 serial blasts conspiracy and the appropriate punishment for the crime. The other is the equivalence between the blasts and the riots that preceded it in December 1992 and January 1993, in the weeks after the Babri Masjid was demolished. Yakub Memon is as guilty of injuring the city that he grew up and lived in as the courts have held him to be. The March 1993 serial blasts shook Mumbai, then Bombay, to the core. His part in that conspiracy has been established. Whether he will hang to death for it or escape the gallows now depends, once again, on a Supreme Court bench. That he is the only convict sentenced to hang, that he could be paying the price for being the key conspirator Tiger Memon’s brother, that there might have been a plea bargain which the authorities did not honour in later years, or that capital punishment has no place in a civilised democracy are issues that have found vociferous support on either side of the debate. It is the other strand of the narrative that is disturbing, to say the least. Those who support Yakub-musthang position are quick to justify that the riots are a different matter, they are not as serious as the blasts and did not lead to the blasts, bringing t hem into this debate over Memon’s death sentence is pointless, and worse, it could reopen old wounds. Nothing could be further from the truth. The causative link was firmly established by the Justice Srikrishna Commission that inquired into both the events. Here’s what the Commission says in chapter 6: “Tiger Memon, the key figure in the serial bomb blasts case, and his family had suffered extensively during the riots and therefore can be said to have deep–rooted motives for revenge. It would appear t hat one of his t rusted accomplices, Javed Dawood Tailor alias Javed Chikna, had also suffered a bullet injury during t he riots, and, therefore he also had a motive for revenge”. Fur t her, “apart from these two specific cases, there was a large, amorphous body of an g r y, fr u s t r at e d an d de s p e rate Muslims keen to seek revenge for the perceived injustice done to and atrocities perpetrated on them, or to others of their community, and it is this sense of revenge which spawned the conspiracy of the serial bomb blasts. This body of angry, frustrated and desperate Muslims provided the material upon which the anti–national and criminal elements succeeded in building up their conspiracy f or t he serial bomb blasts” (Page 45, para iii). The facts are clear: 257 kill ed, 7 1 3 injured and Rs27 crore worth (at 199596 prices) property damaged in the serial blasts; 900 people died or went missing in the December and January riots in police firing, stabbing, arson, mob action and private f i ri ng, and 2,036 were injured besides countless others rendered homeless and without livelihoods, according to the Commission. The blasts were swiftly investigated, the 100-plus accused tried in a special court which handed out convictions and 11 death sentences. The riots were probed only by the Commission, victims had to struggle to even register FIRs after years whereas the policemen indicted by the Commission were promoted and politicians of all ideologies got away without so much as a scratch. Indeed, the two horrific events in Mumbai’s recent history cannot be compared: the riots left behind a bloodier trail and no major conspirator or abettor has paid for it yet.The pursuit of justice in these two events for the last 22 years has been highly selective. Yakub Memon’s case – especially his impending walk to t he gallows should he walk it – is but a signifier of this selectivity.
