It was a Saturday. The streets of Bombay (now Mumbai) was on the move. The ‘dabba walas’ were rushing to deliver lunch boxes to those working in offices that day.. Exactly at 1.30 p.m. Bombay Stock Exchange was rocked by powerful explosion of a car bomb parked in the basement of the Exchange building on Dalal Street. The BSE was closed since there was no trading that day, Saturday being a holiday for the stock market. More than 50 people were killed in the explosion. Many more were lying injured bleeding profusely on the floor. There were 13 bomb explosions in the city leaving 257 people dead and more than 700 injured. Blood was strewn everywhere. Zaveri Bazar, Air India building in Nariman Point, Hotel Sea Rock in Bandra, Hotel Centaur and Hotel Airport Centaur in Juhu were hit by bomb explosions.
After 23 years of the blood bath in Bombay, one of the accused Yakub Memon has been found guilty and the TADA court has issued ‘black warrant’ sentencing him to death. Yakub’s mercy petition was rejected by the President earlier. The Supreme Court also dismissed his appeal against the death sentence. His last appeal, a ‘curative petition’ before the Supreme Court was also rejected on yesterday. He has now appealed to the Governor of Maharastra for mercy to commute his death sentence into life imprisonment. Till the time of writing this piece, the governor’s decision as awaited. If Yakub loses this mercy petition, he is to be hanged till death on July 30 in Nagpur jail where he is lodged.
Yakub Memon’s two brothers Tiger and Ayub Menon who were the master executioners of the serial bomb blasts are absconding and are under the umbrella of Dawood Ibrahim the kingpin who master minded the attack to avenge the demolition Babri Masjd in Ayodhya in 1992.
A debate has been initiated in the country if the capital punishment is justified since the practice is ‘barbaric’. Way back in 1978, Barrington Moore, an American Sociologist wrote a book ‘Injustice’ in which he argued against capital punishment. Here in our country, people demand that the news of ‘hanging’ should not be publicized and the execution should be kept a secret till the job is done.
Death of anyone is not a matter of rejoice. May I ask what kind of pain and anguish people must have experienced whose kin were murdered in the brutal bomb attacks in Bombay in 1993. What was the crime of those who were attacked.. They were innocent people who had nothing to do with the demolition of Babri Masjit..Men, women and children were victims of the attack by the gangsters who acted like terrorists. The operation was financed by some smugglers in Pakistan. Funds were provided by the underworld kingpins. Logistics support was given by criminals in Bombay. The blood bath continued for more than two hours in the city. The argument that Yakub Memon did not execute the attacks and that he did not have grenades and bombs in his hand does not hold water since Yakub was aiding and fixing lose ends to execute the serial bomb blasts in Bombay.
The argument that the handing of any person should be kept a secret is not possible. The family of the condemned accused has to be informed before the execution. The death sentence of the guilty can’t be condoned on compassionate ground. Show compassion to those who lost their sons, fathers, wives, husbands and children in the blast in 1993.
....R K Sinha , MP (Rajya Sabha)
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