Afzal Guru denied fair trial, feels India’s ruling coalition partner

The Indian Union Muslim League led by Minister of External Affairs E. Ahamed has expressed concern over the trial and execution of Mohammad Afzal Guru, convicted in the 2001 attack on India’s Parliament.
“Unlike the hanging of Ajmal Kasab (Pakistani terrorist executed last year for the 2008 Mumbai attacks), there are mysteries (in everything), from Afzal Guru’s arrest to his execution,” Chandrika daily, the mouthpiece of the longterm ally of the Congress party, said in an editorial yesterday.
The newspaper, which cited several flaws in the arrest, trial and execution of the Kashmiri youth, had last week editorially commented that it would give a strong message against antinational forces and the opposition Bharatiya Jamata Party (BJP) has lost a strong weapon against the ruling coalition.
“Healthy interventions and self-criticism keep (India) as the largest democracy in the world. We cannot but remind that it is better for the democracy and civil society that the errors should be corrected and take the country forward,” it said.
Besides the court that handed down death to Guru, the editorial criticizes the country’s Kashmir policy “based on fear.” It also comes down heavily on the mainstream political parties and the media for welcoming the execution without giving the defendant a fair trial.
“The judge who admits that there’re only circumstantial evidences against him says only the death penalty would satisfy the public conscience as (the attack on Parliament) had shaken the country. The courts putting public conscience above the law is a cause for serious concern,” it says.
Besides Ahamed, a former editor of the daily who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Malappuram constituency in Kerala, IUML has two more members in the lower house of Parliament — ET Mohammed Basheer (Ponnani, Kerala) and M Abdur Rahman (Velloor, Tamil Nadu) who contested on Dravida Munnetra Kazhakom (DMK) ticket.
“More than an Indian citizen, Afzal was treated like a Kashmiri militant with a Muslim identity,” it says. “There were nobody here to react against the gagging of free speech in Kashmir after the hanging. From this, one can read that the policy India follows in Kashmir is based on fear.”
n Exclusive to Arab News