Mumbai bomber to be executed
Yakub Memon’s appeal rejected by India’s top court
NEW DELHI // India’s top court yesterday rejected a final appeal by Yakub Memon, a key plotter of the 1993 Mumbai bomb attacks that killed hundreds of people, paving the way for his execution. Media reports said that Yakub Memon would hang on July 30 after the supreme court rejected his final plea. The Bombay Stock Exchange, the offices of Air India and a luxury hotel were among the targets of the March 1993 blasts, which killed 257 people in India’s commercial capital, and were the deadliest to ever hit the country.
The attacks were believed to have been staged by Mumbai’s Muslim- dominated underworld in retaliation for anti-Muslim violence that had killed more than 1,000 people. Memon was the only one of 11 people convicted for the 1993 attacks to have his death sentence upheld on appeal.
The sentences for the others were commuted to life imprisonment.
Executions are carried out for only “the rarest of rare” cases in India.
President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected several mercy pleas in recent years, ending an unofficial eight-year moratorium on death sentences being carried out.
A Kashmiri separatist convicted of involvement in a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament was executed in New Delhi in 2013, while the lone surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks was hanged in 2012.
“Crimes such as these deserve maximum punishment,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
“But we believe that the maximum punishment should not be the death penalty because it is inherently inhumane.” Memon, an accountant by profession, at his trial denied any involvement in the blasts. The trial lasted eight years and ended in 2003.
He and two of his brothers, Essa and Yusuf Memon, were convicted in 2006 under Indian antiterrorism laws of conspiracy and abetting the attacks. Another brother, Tiger Memon, was alleged to have planned the attacks along with the Mumbai gang boss Dawood Ibrahim. Both remain in hiding, reportedly in Pakistan. The Memons left for Dubai in the days before the bombs exploded but were arrested when they returned to India in 1994.
Eight members of the family were charged over the attacks but Memon’s father died during the long- running legal proceedings, and three others were acquitted. They had all denied any role in the attacks. The bombings also embroiled Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, who is serving a prison sentence for buying weapons from gangsters accused of orchestrating the bombings.