From: Sanhati, February 13, 2013
CPDR STATEMENT CONDEMNING THE EXECUTION OF AFZAL GURU
Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) Mumbai strongly condemns the hanging of Afzal Guru by the Indian state on the morning of 9th February 2013.
Death sentence is an arbitrary and cruel mode of punishment that is irreversible, imposed by fallible human beings in a subjective manner and has no place in a civilized society. The “rarest of rare” idiom is irrationally applied. Whether one lives or dies depends on prejudices of a particular judge or on the Government to earn political mileage. For these reasons, amongst others, death penalty should be abolished.
Afzal Guru’s hanging reflects the ease with which the different arms of the state support each other to snuff out a life under the guise of legal sanction in absolute contravention of the rule of law.
Afzal was denied a fair trial and the opportunity to adequately defend himself against an offence punishable with death penalty. The only evidence against him was circumstantial. Competent legal aid was not made available to Afzal by the trial court, which is the court where the foundation of a criminal case is laid. His lawyer did not cross-examine fifty seven of the eighty witnesses and Afzal repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with the lawyer before the trial court. The lawyer without instructions admitted the crucial identification of the deceased terrorists which has been relied upon by the courts to establish that Afzal knew them. The other evidence relied upon to establish “beyond reasonable doubt” Afzal’s implication were the alleged telephone calls, but the court overlooked the discrepancy in the phone numbers and IMEI of the phone and the convenient seizure of the SIM cards, phone handsets from both Afzal and the deceased at the Parliament with no evidence of the content of the phone conversations and which were unchalleged by Afzal’s lawyer. The alleged recovery of the laptop from Afzal containing files which were written later, hence tampered with was explained by the court as being “self generating and self written”. The advocate did not challenge the identification by witnesses for the first time in court without any test identification parade. The acceptance of this evidence by the Supreme Court is a departure of all established principles of criminal jurisprudence of this country, and the only explanation for the conviction and awarding of death sentence is what the Supreme Court stated in its judgment t: (that the) “collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender. The challenge to the unity, integrity and sovereignty of India by these acts of terrorists and conspirators, can only be compensated by giving the maximum punishment to the person who is proved to be the conspirator in this treacherous act. The appellant, who is a surrendered militant and who was bent upon repeating the acts of treason against the nation, is a menace to the society and his life should become extinct.”
Afzal’s sentence and the manner in which it was carried on are manifestly unjust and illegal. The President too failed to intervene to prevent the miscarriage of justice. He rejected Afzal Guru’s wife’s mercy petition, and a few days later on the morning of 9th February he was executed in absolute secrecy. The press reports show that Afzal Guru was told about his imminent execution only a couple of hours before it was carried out, and his family came to know about the same through the media. The reason for secrecy as in Ajmal Kasab’s case, can be attributed only to deny Afzal Guru and his family an opportunity to approach the courts in judicial review, which other death row convicts have successfully done in the past.
A person’s life has been taken on the ground that he was involved in an “attack on democracy” without according him the Constitutional precautions he is entitled to. This, we believe is the death of democracy.
We hereby condemn the execution of Afzal Guru, and demand that :
- the Delhi government hands over the body of Afzal Guru to his wife so that the family is able to perform his last rites;
- the Government of India abolishes death sentence as a method of punishment in India for all crimes;
- till the death sentence is abolished, the Government of India declares a moratorium on executions;
- the Government of India forthwith signs and ratifies the United Nations Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
[This statement was adopted by those attending the Public Meeting called by CPDR on 12-2-2013 at Mumbai.]
PRESS RELEASE: People’s Union for Democratic Rights
11.02.13
Throttling Freedom after Hanging Afzal
PUDR strongly condemns the imposition of curfew accompanied by blanket gag on all media, including television, print and online, in the Kashmir valley following the secretive hanging of Afzal Guru.
Since Saturday morning Kashmir valley has been placed under curfew forcing people to stay locked inside their houses, satellite and cable tv, internet and even mobile sms have been blacked out in the valley. So far three people have been killed and more than fifty injured in the Valley. On Saturday night, the police also stopped the publication and distribution of all newspapers. The authorities did not allow copy to reach the press. Police teams visited various printing presses of daily newspapers and asked the management to stop publishing. The dailies that managed to slip through this net and managed to publish their editions had all the copies seized. With the internet services withdrawn, online editions too couldn’t get updated on time.
This is all being done to ensure that protests against this act of murder were suppressed and to keep the people of India in the dark about why popular opinion in Kashmir and voices in India were opposed to this cold-blooded killing of Afzal Guru. Evidently, house-arresting the entire population of the Valley and the blatant violation of the right to free speech and expression of the entire population of Kashmir valley doesn’t prick the conscience of the self-styled keepers of the ‘collective conscience’ of the country.
One is also struck by the double standards of the J&K state government. On the one hand chief minister Omar Abdullah is speaking out against the hanging of Afzal Guru, on the other hand his administration has placed the entire people of Kashmir under curfew and is systematically blacking out information and curbing their freedom of expression and assembly.
Gagging of the media is nothing new in Kashmir, and by and large it goes unreported in Indian media. India’s Media watchdogs have acquired notoriety in acquiescing in the throttling of freedom of expression and assembly through their silence consistently where Kashmir is concerned. PUDR sincerely hopes that the Indian mainstream media and its apex bodies like the Press Council of India, Editors Guild and the Indian Broadcasters Association will discover courage to speak out against this outrageous house arrest of an entire people and the attack on the freedom of the press.
Asish Gupta and D Manjit
(Secretaries PUDR)
Human Rights Forum: Press Release
9-2-2013
The Human Rights Forum (HRF) strongly condemns the execution of Afzal Guru. The execution is brazen injustice and inhuman. It is a dark day for our democracy.
HRF is in principle opposed to capital punishment in all cases without exception. This is regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime; guilt, innocence or other characteristics of the individual. The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights and has no deterrent effect. We believe it is brutal, uncivilised, arbitrary and discriminatory. It is nothing but the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the State and it violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is well to remember that all the five attackers of Parliament were killed in the gunfight that very day and Afzal Guru’s alleged involvement in the planning of the attack on Parliament is the only reason why he was sentenced to die. This is no way meets the “rarest of rare” criteria for which the death sentence is allowed for in Indian law. It is therefore unfortunate that the Supreme Court also succumbed to the common emotion of retributive justice when it noted that sentencing him to death would satisfy “the collective conscience of the society”. This, when the evidence against Guru was thin and circumstantial.
Unfortunately, Afzal’s case was enmeshed in a politics of hate from the very moment of his arrest. The trail itself was flawed. It was based on faulty investigation, circumstantial evidence and the arbitrary role of the police was deeply suspect from the very beginning. Moreover, Afzal Guru did not have adequate legal representation in the course of his trial. According to Amnesty International, the trail did not conform with India’s obligation under international human rights law. The secrecy surrounding Afzal’s execution, like in the Kasab case, is very disturbing and raises serious questions about procedural fairness.
Another reason why capital punishment must be abolished is that in case a judgement is erroneous, the mistake cannot be reversed. Even the Supreme Court can err when it comes to making decisions about life and death. We recall that in August 2012, fourteen eminent retired judges had written to the President asking him to commute the death sentences of 13 convicts because the Supreme Court recently admitted that seven of its judgements giving those 13 capital punishment were made in error.
It is time our nation curbed its instincts for bloody retribution and moved away from an “eye for an eye” form of punishment. Retribution is a kind of punishment to ourselves. Justice should be restorative, not retributive.
The desirability of the abolition of the death penalty has long been recognized in international law and standards. HRF believes that public opinion in India can no longer ignore the global movement in favour of abolition of the death penalty. As of today, 141 countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. We must work towards becoming a more humane and compassionate society, and leave a better, less blood-thirsty world behind for our children.
HRF demands that the government establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.
VS Krishna S Jeevan Kumar
(HRF State general secretary) (HRF State president)
APDR Statement on the hanging of Afzal Guru
DEATH PENALTY IS ANACHRONOUS WITH HUMAN RIGHTS
APDR strongly deplores the hanging of Afzal Guru, convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack case, under a shroud of secrecy in Tihar Jail on Saturday morning. The execution follows closely that of Ajmal Kasab in November. In handing down these barbarous punishments in a row, the Indian state has proved that it has completely moved away from ideals of Gandhi, Tagore and other illustrious thinkers of this nation and decided to play the global hangman to please the hawks in home and abroad. It is utterly unfortunate that neither the apex court nor President Pranab Mukherjee chose to exercise their discretion to set aside the death sentence. The action is anachronous with human rights jurisprudence that believes in the abolition of the death penalty for enhancement of human dignity and progressive development of human rights.
We recall here that the Ahmedabad special court in the Naroda Patiya massacre case has refrained from pronouncing the death sentence noting that it is the trend worldwide to move away from capital punishemnt and 139 countries have already abolished it.
The UN Secretary-General recently mentioned that India was one of the countries that retained the death penalty and voted against General Assembly resolution 65/206 on moratorium on the use of the death penalty.
Fourteen former Supreme Court and high court judges have written to President Pranab Mukherjee asking him to commute the death sentences of 13 convicts. Their letter mentions that the Supreme Court has admitted that two “wrongly sentenced prisoners” — Ravji Rao and Surja Ram — had been executed on 4 May 1996 and 7 April 1997 respectively.
Yet, Afzal Guru’s hanging one again indicates that the juridical institutions could not rise above the dominant body of political opinion and applied the ‘death for death’ principle.
APDR strongly believes that India has no need to be worried of conspirators and can, with firm faith in herself, accept ICCPR-OP 2 to abolish death penalty.
Dhiraj Sengupta, General Secretary
PUDR Press Release
PUDR today strongly reaffirms its opposition to the inhuman, brutal and arbitrary provision of capital punishment. The secretive hanging of Mohd. Afzal Guru today goes further to show how it is unfair, unjust and can be carried out for narrow political benefit of those in power.
The highandedness by the police and the flouting of each procedural norm marks the case against Afzal from the start. Picked up and kept in illegal custody, tortured to give a confession to the police, and forced to reiterate the police story before media cameras while in police custody, while the police forced the media to edit out every reference contradicting the police story, Afzal was condemned even before his trial.
Highhandedness by the political bosses marks the death of Afzal. Rejection of his mercy petition on 3 February and the approval of the order for execution by the Home Minister on 4 February were kept away from Afzal, his family and his lawyer. Afzal was thereby denied recourse to a court to examine the refusal order. It should be noted that many commutations have resulted from court interventions after the Presidents have turned down mercy petitions. And today, when a bench of the highest court is currently considering the constitutionality of death penalty itself, carrying out an execution is most reprehensible. And finally the right of his family to perform the last rites has been illegally denied by disposing off Afzal’s body in an undisclosed place.
Even by existing law, death penalty can only be given in rarest of rare cases. But the case of Afzal is miles away from any such definition. He was not one who fired a shot. He was not present at the scene. Even by prosecution evidence his role was peripheral. The court ruled that he did not belong to a terrorist organisation. Add to it Afzal’s story: that he was a surrendered militant who was brutally tortured by the BSF to force him to become an informer. Surely this does not fit into the rarest of rare category of criminals who is beyond redemption.
A punishment to a convict is supposed to address the collective conscience of society and is expected to provide possibilities of reform and repentance. Afzal’s punishment denies both. While his life is snuffed out the possibility of ever correcting an error in the judgment is lost. Also curfew has been clamped in Afzal’s Kashmir to prevent people from voicing their views. Television channels are blocked so people can be kept in the dark. The ‘collective conscience’ that the death of Afzal is supposedly meant to serve certainly does not include the people of Kashmir.
Right-wing hooligans and the police in the capital today further jointly ensured that all voices opposing this execution were silenced. People who joined a silent protest to express their opposition to the hanging were pushed around, heckled, verbally abused, and pelted with stones. Far from removing or restraining the handful of goons, police detained the protestors till late afternoon so that the voices of protest are not heard.
We demand that:
(1) the dead body of Mohd. Afzal be handed over to his family.
(2) an immediate moratorium on death penalty be declared.
(3) this new practice of carrying out executions secretively, so as to prevent debate and protest on the issue be immediately stopped.
Asish Gupta
D. Manjit
Secretaries, PUDR
COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS
185/3, FOURTH FLOOR, ZAKIR NAGAR, NEW DELHI-110025
09/02/13
Condemn strongly the illegal act of executing Mohd. Afzal Guru!
Condemn and expose the violation of all procedures and law of the land!
Release SAR Geelani the working president of CRPP immediately and unconditionally!
The CRPP condemns strongly the illegal execution of Mohd. Afzal Guru. The central home minister and the home secretary have gone on record saying that every procedure has been followed in the case of Afzal Guru. None of his family members are aware of this decision of the Government of India. Nor do the lawyers of Afzal Guru. It is mandatory on the side of the government to inform the petitioners who had filed the clemency petition. Afzal’s wife Tabassum had filed a clemency petition demanding justice for her husband who never throughout the trial got an opportunity to defend himself and demand justice. She had in that petition even traced his early days in Kashmir and how he was continually being harassed and tortured by the notorious STF of J&K to act as an informer for the state. She showed in that petition how the ordeal has still been continuing in the life of her husband and their family in their quest for justice. The fact remains that neither Tabassum nor any of her family members have been informed about the rejection of this petition.
It is absolutely necessary that once a clemency petition is rejected the petitioner should be informed so that s/he can take recourse to other provisions that are guaranteed by the judiciary of India. There are provisions for judicial review which are quite exhaustive. But Afzal Guru was denied once again his last chance to represent himself and get relief from the gallows.
It should be noted that Mr. Bhullar who is also under death row in Tihar Jail had moved a petition in the Supreme Court to look into the matter of the delay in the execution of death sentence. There are case laws in the apex court wherein pronounced delay in the execution of death sentence is in itself grounds for converting the same into life. The court had appointed Mr. Ram Jethmalani as the amicus curiae in this case and was hearing the petition. That the Government of India under the Congress government has even subverted the Supreme Court in clandestinely executing the death sentence bemoans the real, fascist nature of this government which has scant regards for its own judiciary and law.
The clandestine execution of the death sentence of Mr. Afzal Guru violating all procedures and even the law of the land is nothing but desperate attempts of the ruling class parties like the Congress and the BJP to bet for votes appealing to the frenzy of jingoism. After having alienated the masses of the people and even the middle class through their anti-people, pro-market policies resulting in widespread miseries for the working people these parties have lost their faces and credibility and hence this desperate, brazen display of competitive jingoism on the life of someone who from the day one had never a chance to defend himself properly.
We at the CRPP appeal to all the democratic and progressive sections of the subcontinent to see through these devious designs of the ruling classes and forge a mass movement to abolish the evil of death penalty from the subcontinent.
The CRPP protests against the arrest of Prof.SAR Geelani who is our Working President while on his way to Malviya Nagar by the notorious Special Cell of the Delhi Police. The Special Cell as usual is browbeating in every possible way to terrorise the people from expressing their dissent against the clandestine execution of Mr. Afzal Guru. We demand his immediate and unconditional release. We call upon all progressive and democratic sections to protest against such fascist designs of the Indian state.
*Condemn the Cold Blooded Execution of Afzal Guru by the state:*
Resolution adopted at the Second Shahid Azmi Memorial Lecture, 9th February 2013
This House condemns in no uncertain terms the hanging of Afzal Guru by stealth and in secrecy, disallowing him the last judicial resort that was due to him. We condemn the callous denial to Afzal Guru the last opportunity to meet with his family members.
There is ample documentation to demonstrate that Afzal Guru’s trial was vitiated; that his legal defence was compromised; that fabricated and forged evidence was submitted to, and accepted by the court, the highest of which, admitted while sentencing him to death that this was done to satisfy the ‘collective conscience of the nation’.
We strongly oppose the cold-blooded execution of Afzal Guru in our name.
*Signatories/- *
Vrinda Grover, Senior Advocate, Delhi
Yug Mohit Chaudhary, Senior Advocate, Mumbai
Manisha Sethi, Sangamitra Sanghamitra Misra, Tanweer Fazal and Rahul Govind, JTSA
V Suresh, Kavita Srivasta, Ravi Kiran Jain & Mahtab Alam, PUCL
Usha Ramanathan, Legal Researcher
Harsh Mandar, Aman Biradiri
Mahmood Farooqui, Writer
Anusha Rizvi, Filmmaker
Dilnawaz Pasha, Journalist
Shweta Ghosh, Filmmaker
Aporvanand, DU
Aftab Alam, DU
Kalaiyavasan, JNU
Priyanka Varma
Peggy Mohan, Linguist and author
Meera Ahmad, Anthropologist
Mukul Dube, Writer-Editor
Iqbal Ahmad, Journalist
Madhuresh Kumar, NAPM
Mona Das, DU
Sadiq Naqvi, Journalist
Inteshar Ahmad
Binno Sen
Neenu Suresh
Prashanto Chandra Sen
Mirtyunjay, Student for Resistance
Md wasim
Asad Ashraf, jamia millia islamia
Mayur Suresh, Advocate
G Anamda Selam, Advocate
Kaveri Gill
Kiran Bhatty
Daanish Hussain, actor
Prince Jindal
Seema Misra
Sohail Akbar
Shalini Gera, Activist
Monu Kohar
G. Venkatesan, CHRI
Mary Abraham, Ambedkar University
Bhawana Mahajan
Raja Bagga
P C Sen
Kusum Lata, SFR
Jitendra Kumar, JNU
S. Prabu
S. Sethu Mahendran
Kathipavan. N, DU
K.S.M. Vimal Kanth
Suchi Chaudhary
Nasiruddin, Journalist
Chitra Chaudhry
Sawmiya Rajaran, JNU
Sriranjini Vadiraj
Shreya Ghosh
Jeevika Shiv
Gauri Jagdale
Suroor Mander
Dheeraj Pandey
Sahba Saiyyad
Manisha Pandey, Journalist
Shahnawaz Malik, Journalist
Malathi M
Anisha Raman
G. S. Anuj Kumar
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