Rajya Sabha to debate death penalty today

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“Kalam had supported abolition of death penalty saying that as President, he felt pain in deciding mercy petitions of death row convicts since most of them had social and economic bias,” says the resolution moved by CPI’s D Raja. The resolution cites research by the National Law University, Delhi about “disproportionate use of death penalty against disadvantaged groups” as well as “caste and religious biases in the imposition of death penalty in India, indicating that 94 per cent of the persons given death sentences for terror related cases belonged to Dalit caste or religious minorities”.

When contacted, Raja told The Indian Express, “We are opposed to capital punishment because taking away someone’s life is not in line with evolving jurisprudence. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth cannot be the philosophy behind India’s jurisprudence when many countries are moving away from it.”

Former Rajya Sabha MP Brinda Karat, one of the signatories in the petition to President Pranab Mukherjee asking him to grant mercy to Yakub, said the “Supreme Court dealt with technical issues on the curative petition and did not go into substantive issues”.

“According to the Constitution, the President is the highest authority to decide on this, so we have sent a petition to him,” she said.

The BJP, on the other hand, welcomed the Supreme Court verdict dismissing Yakub’s petition. “We welcome the SC judgement. Justice has been delivered to the victims of the blasts,” BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said. He said those who opposed the death sentence were “mentally challenged and need treatment”. “There should be no politics played on terrorism, which does not have any religion,” Sharma said.

Party spokesperson Sambit Patra said it was a “big day” for victims of the blasts, while spokesperson Nalin Kohli said the verdict had brought “finality to the entire legal process”.

“A sense of justice prevails for the victims of 1993 Mumbai blasts. It was wrong for some people to have politicised the whole issue or for giving it a communal colour,” Patra said.

The Congress, however, said only “partial justice” has been done to the victims of the blasts. “Full justice would be done when the Modi government ensures the extradition of Tiger Memon from Pakistan to India. The PM and the government should now proceed to deliver on rhetoric by ensuring that Tiger Menon, Dawood Ibrahim, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Hafiz Sayeed and others finding shelter in Pakistan are brought back to India to be punished as per the due process of law,” Congress communication department head Randeep Surjewala said.