Thursday in India was marked by two funerals: One of former president APJ Abdul Kalam, and the second of Mumbai bomb blasts convict Yakub Memon. Kalam had died suddenly of a massive heart attack while giving a talk to students at the new Indian Institute of Management in Shillong. Memon was hanged to death on his 53rd birthday in Nagpur jail after the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence, and the president had turned down a mercy plea.
President Kalam’s death united the nation in grief. It was one of the very few occasions when Indians from across the political spectrum, from its disparate and squabbling extremities, paused briefly in their daily abusing of one another to express their respect and affection for the man. Hindutva activists, Congress supporters, Leftists, Muslim intellectuals, people from the northeast, all mourned Dr Kalam. Foreigners wondered at the rare convergence of views. I think the reason was simple: Everyone saw Kalam as a good, honest, humble, and learned man. Such people are hard to find these days.
Memon’s hanging had the opposite effect: It divided the nation. The terrorism convict, a chartered accountant from Mahim in Mumbai, had been arrested in 1994 and had exhausted his legal options in the following 21 years, during which his case wound its way through the courts all the way up to the Supreme Court and the president.
Twenty-one years is a long time. It is long enough for people who were not born then to cast their votes. It was long enough for memories to fade, and wounds to heal. This hanging, and the debate surrounding it, has brought back many bad memories.
The case in which Memon was hanged related to the serial bomb blasts that tore through Mumbai on March 12, 1993, killing 257 people and wounding more than 700. The blasts were preceded by rioting between Hindus and Muslims in Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993, in which a total of around 1,000 people of both communities died.
Dawood Ibrahim and Yakub’s brother, Tiger Memon, are the main accused in those blast cases. RDX was used in the blasts, which was supplied by Pakistan. Dawood and Tiger were moved to Karachi around the time of the blasts by the ISI. Proof of this came from Yakub, who co-operated with the Indian agencies after his arrest in 1994.
Yakub always believed he would eventually be cleared of serious charges, according to his lawyers and journalists who met him during his trial.
His hanging has left many polarising questions. Did the Indian agencies fail to protect him after luring him back from an ISI safe house in Pakistan with promises of safety and justice? Was it because the government of that time -- a Congress government led by Narasimha Rao -- wanted to make political capital out of his arrest? Did the rivalry between then Home Minister SB Chavan and then Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar, also of the Congress, have anything to do with Yakub’s fate?
In an interview to India Today magazine in 1994, Dawood had claimed that he had got caught in the rivalry between Pawar and Chavan. Only he and Pawar know how true this is. Chavan is dead.
There was also another rivalry at that time that may have led to different departments of the government acting towards different ends. This was the rivalry between Home Minister Chavan and his deputy Rajesh Pilot.
Whatever it was, once the trial began, things got progressively worse for Yakub. He took a personal interest in preparing his own case, but failed to bring on record the “mitigating circumstances” surrounding his return that could have saved him from the gallows.
His hanging has caused anger among many, who are now asking why rioters found guilty in the Mumbai and Gujarat riots have not been hanged. India has not given capital punishment to any rioter of any faith, at least in the past three decades.
I was personally against Yakub’s hanging. Now it is done, and I am left wondering whether it was the games of politicians or the maze of law that led to this outcome.
India’s justice system is a frightening place. It is Kafkaesque. A book on a famous murder case called the Aarushi murder was recently published. It documents, in shocking detail, the callousness of the police and investigating agencies. Aarushi Talwar, a girl of 14, was murdered in her own home in Noida near Delhi. Her parents, both doctors, were jailed for the crime.
This sort of thing seems to happen quite regularly.
In June, the Bombay High Court freed a man named Gopal Shetye who had spent seven years in jail for rape. During this time, his wife had left him and married again. His children were put in an orphanage. His father died. He lost his job.
The police had arrested him because the victim had said the rapist’s name was Gopi. It seems he may have been the wrong Gopi.
I am not against the police. It is a problem with the quality of our public institutions. The quality of India’s public hospitals is such that barring a few centres of excellence such as AIIMS in Delhi, no one who can possibly afford to avoid them ever goes to them. The quality of India’s municipal schools is such that no one who can possibly send his or her children to a private school sends them to a municipal one.
Similarly, the quality of India’s justice system is such that cases languish for decades. Witnesses don’t come forward to give evidence because no one wants to be harassed for years. Even in road accidents, people leave the victims lying rather than risk getting embroiled in any police matter.
At the end of a seemingly endless trial, one can’t be sure that justice has actually been done. After all, courts go by evidence, and the evidence is presented by a police force that prides itself merely on the number of pages in its charge sheets.
India has seen many explosions of popular outrage in recent years. Outrage is now ritually televised, and never a revolution. It is as fake as reality TV.
When there was a gang-rape in Delhi in 2012, the country exploded in anger against rape. Now that a man has been hanged, many will explode against the death penalty. Others will explode in anger against those who oppose the death penalty.
I wonder any of if it will serve any purpose. A much greater purpose would be served if the outrage was directed at reforming the police and judiciary. Unfortunately, that is neither incendiary nor sexy. Everyone knows it needs to be done, but it is a long, difficult, and boring grind.
I am sure the TRP hunters and Twitter trolls will be happier raging ineffectually against the machine, while carefully avoiding any suggestion that something should be done to fix it.