William Shakespeare had famously said, all the world’s a stage and all the men and women are merely players, playing many parts according to the script. And so did the well-educated Yakub Memon, the younger brother of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts mastermind Ibrahim Tiger Memon, who was executed by the Indian authorities on July 30, the very day he turned 53.
From a successful chartered accountant, who allegedly financed a deadly terror scheme in collaboration with anti-India actors based abroad, to becoming an Indian intelligence asset-cum-approver who helped track the footprint of the underworld fugitives holed up in foreign shore, Yakub had indeed been a multifaceted performer in one life.
Some believe the vengeance of the Almighty was his nemesis, symbolized by the date of birth coinciding with the hanging date. Ironically, the Salatul Janaza (the funeral prayer) of ex-Indian President Abdul Kalam being performed with that of Yakub’s on the same date, though at different locations, also brought to the fore the typical “good Muslim versus bad Muslim” narrative.
As usual, comparisons were drawn between Kalam’s distinguished life and Yakub’s felony to underscore the fact that crime never pays and that India, under the muscular leadership of Narendra Modi, will mercilessly crush every head that rises against the country.
But nobody, apart from a few at the government level, was aware that Kalam’s funeral was deliberately withheld to minimize the possible backlash of Yakub’s hanging.
“Kalam’s and Yakub’s last rites falling on the same day provides a cushion to the government amid accusations of the Indian legal system being unfair to Muslims,” confessed a top government source who also confirmed that the security apparatus was extremely concerned by the angry outbursts triggered by the denial of Yakub’s mercy plea.
With the whole of India remaining glued to the funeral of a president they admired madly, little did the unsuspecting citizens knew that Kalam’s death was being insolently exploited to prevent any communal flare up. Though the intention of arresting extreme communal polarization or even bloodbath in selective pockets might have been honest, the very fact that a dead Kalam had to be used as a shield does raise valid questions about the fairness of judicial finality in Yakub’s case.
To borrow Mahatma Gandhi’s illustrious grandson Gopal Gandhi’s words, a doubt has irretrievably been cast on India’s integrity of process given Yakub’s hanging in the face of revelation of his submission to Indian jurisdiction and wholehearted cooperation with law.
However, one must admit that the Indian judiciary does have a history of intervening in favor of condemned prisoners. Moreover, the Supreme Court has over the years evolved a jurisprudence that limits capital punishment to the “rarest of rare” cases apart from introducing post-appeal review as well as curative petition to benefit prisoners on death row.
To further strengthen the justice delivery mechanism, the court made appeals for mercy justiciable and also laid down strict regulations against undue delay in settling mercy pleas. When the judiciary itself was trying to humanize the legal process associated with death sentences and the national law commission deliberating on replacing capital punishment with a sentence of imprisonment for the rest of a convict’s life, the undue haste in disposing Yakub’s case at this juncture will intrigue any rational follower of Indian legal system.
Even though, many, including Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh, argued that Yakub got every opportunity to defend himself and the same judiciary had acquitted his better-half Raheen and brother Suleiman from the blast-conspiracy charges, the very fact that the death penalty of those who planted explosives across Mumbai city was commuted by the apex court leaves enough room for suspicion and also point toward judicial bias.
Was Yakub hanged because, as a source informed, “India needed to keep the big fishes free for politico-strategic reasons?”
As former junior Foreign Minister of India Shashi Tharoor rightly points out “given the existing judicial and economic biases, further aggravated by inflamed public opinion, an inept criminal justice system can hardly ensure the fair use of the death penalty.” Tharoor goes on to add that “revenge is not an acceptable justification for any governmental punishment especially when there is no direct correlation between death penalty and deterrence.” As Tharoor rightly asserted, the “eye for an eye” philosophy is indeed unworthy of a flourishing modern democracy. We must also not lose sight of the fact that Yakub was an Indian intelligence asset used discreetly to track and trace fugitive gangsters wanted in India for crime against humanity.
And B. Raman’s, the official who handled Yakub, charged that the Indian authorities had deceived Yakub does expose the rot in India’s security superstructure, since successful covert-action is contingent on solemn word-of-honor. Besides, the use of underworld figures in espionage, in exchange for providing some form of immunity, is a common phenomenon, as reflected in American intelligence’s strategic-asset, David Headley escaping gallows despite his involvement in the killing of American citizens in 2008 Mumbai attacks. A strategic-intelligence official once lamented “more often than not, intra and inter-organizational professional rivalry and extraneous pressure comes in the way of honoring commitments made to motivated human-assets.”
Likewise, at the fag-end of his life Raman realized belatedly that it was the political establishment’s betrayal that compelled him to terminate the secret-mission and retract assets despite the chance of getting to the real mastermind. Raman suspected, Yakub was denied the privileges normally granted to state-approvers because “he knew too much about how the politico-administrative system and underworld scratch each other’s back.”
