Afzal Guru's execution is Cong. one-upmanship political game: SDPI

hopal, February 12 (Pervez Bari): The Social Democratic Party of India, (SDPI), has flayed the Congress-led UPA Govt. for the execution of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru which was carried out in a budget-level secretive manner without informing his family members and his lawyers and without even fulfilling the last wishes of a dying person. It was as sudden and secretive as the 21 November 2012 execution of LeT terrorist and 26/11 attacks convict Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab.

      SDPI national president E. Abubacker in a statement said that the Congress has tried to play a one-upmanship political game over its saffron-backed arch rival BJP to disarm it stealthily and score electoral gains in the ensuing elections. The timing of sending Afzal Guru to the gallows is nothing but is only to get political benefits. The hanging is a shrewd politico-strategic move on the part of the Congress.

      Abubacker said it is a reckless act and is part of the political game Congress is playing to outdo VHP/BJP''s Hindutva and security planks. The decision to hang Guru could have been guided not just by judicial considerations but also by political exigencies. In fact Guru has been hanged to please the public opinion, created by the fascist media. The execution was legally and morally unjustified and hasty, he added.

      He said that with one stroke, the government has effectively silenced the BJP’s shouting brigade that did not let go of a single chance to lambast the UPA for not executing Afzal Guru for the past seven-and-a-half years ever since the Supreme Court confirmed his death sentence on 4th August 2005. The timing of the execution is significant as it comes days after the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, stormed the national capital with his politically-loaded lecture at Shri Ram College of Commerce on 6 February.

      After taking a decade to take a decision to hang Guru, the government is still likely to face the charge that the hanging is a political ploy to deprive its opponents a propaganda plank in the run-up to the state elections this year and the general election in 2014, the statement said.

      Abubacker pointed out that there is ample documentation to demonstrate that Afzal Guru’s trial was vitiated; that his legal defence was compromised; that fabricated and forged evidence was submitted to, and accepted by the court, the highest of which, admitted while sentencing him to death that this was done to satisfy the ‘collective conscience of the nation’.

      The political symbolism being conveyed by the Congress-led UPA government through these executions is that it has a zero tolerance on the issue of terrorism that impinges on national security. But ironically, despite the two executions, the ball is still in the Congress court as the latest execution raises the inevitable question: when will Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins be hanged? In August 2011, the then President Pratibha Patil had rejected the mercy pleas of the three killers – Murugan alias Sriharan, Santhan and Perarivalan. The trio has been on death row since May 1999 when the Supreme Court had sentenced them as well as Murugan’s wife Nalini to death. Nalini’s death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment by the apex court in 2000, the statement stated.

      Abubacker lamented how the Supreme Court has itself admitted that many of those on death row are there because of “erroneous legal precedents set by itself.” Yet, both the judiciary and the government have been reluctant to announce a moratorium on executions until a thoroughgoing review is carried out. (pervezbari@eth.net)