Man hangs in wake of 1993 bombings

Ignoring pleas and petitions by civil society groups, India on Thursday hanged an accountant convicted of supporting the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people in the country’s worst terrorist attack. The police barred media from publishing images of Yakub Abdul Razak Memon’s funeral, apparently fearing a backlash against the execution that many said was driven by politics. Prominent citizens, including retired Supreme Court judges, had urged President Pranab Mukerjee to commute Memon’s sentence to life in prison. That appeal reflected both opposition to the death penalty and fresh claims by his lawyers that he freely surrendered to Indian authorities in Kathmandu, Nepal, and that his direct links to the bombings had not been sufficiently established.