Mumbai: The is scheduled to hear the mercy petition of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Abdul Razak Memon on Monday. Memon’s final plea, challenging the death warrant against him, will come up for hearing at 11 am today. Maharashtra Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao, yesterday held consultations with Home and Law Department officials over the petition.
CM Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government had sent its opinion to the Governor late Friday evening on the plea submitted by Memon following the Supreme Court’s rejection of his curative petition which sought a stay on execution of his death sentence slated for July 30.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu had on July 21 rejected Memon’s plea saying that the grounds raised by him does not fall within the principles laid down by the apex court in 2002 in deciding the curative petition, the last judicial remedy available to an aggrieved person.
Memon, in his plea, had claimed he was suffering from schizophrenia since 1996 and remained behind the bars for nearly 20 years. He had sought commutation of death penalty contending that a convict cannot be awarded life term and the extreme penalty simultaneously for the same offence.
The apex court on April 9 this year had dismissed Memon’s petition seeking review of his death sentence which was upheld on March 21, 2013.
Memon’s review petition was heard by a three-judge bench in an open court in pursuance of a Constitution bench verdict that the practice of deciding review pleas in chambers be done away with, in cases where death penalty has been awarded. Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had said that the hanging of Yakub Memon should not be communalised, adding that terrorism has no religion.
Last week, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi had alleged that Memon is being hanged only because he belongs to a particular religion and added that death sentences of those convicted in former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination case were commuted to life imprisonment.
People from diverse fields had questioned the death sentence to Memon. Former Supreme Court judge Justice (Retd) Markandey Katju said that there has been “gross travesty of justice” in the case of Memon who is going to be hanged on July 30 for taking part in the conspiracy to carry out serial bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1993.
Katju said after carefully studying the judgement of the court he finds that the evidence on which Memon has been found guilty is “very weak”.Senior CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury also criticised the death sentence but said Memon should be jailed for life. “The CPM considers that Yakub Memon is a part of a conspiracy and he should certainly be punished. We have reason and International Committee have given its consent too. He should be under life imprisonment.”
Bureau Report
Leave a Reply