Noose-e-Afzal

"I don't think the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government can ever reach a decision. The Congress party has two mouths and is playing a double game. I really wish L K Advani becomes India's next Prime Minister as he is the only one who can take a decision and hang me. At least my pain and daily suffering would ease then."
Afzal, who has been convicted in the December 13 attack on Parliament, has cried for attention. The BJP and a section of media have responded with alacrity by voicing their perplexity at the delay caused by the UPA government in executing the death penalty. The others have clamored against this ‘blood lust’ and are appalled by the insensitivity shown in this case.
I haven’t followed the Afzal episode very closely and so cannot afford any observation here; but, certainly, after going through some of the stuff thrown up by Google there seems to me that there is sufficient doubt with regards to the execution of the case and there is quite a sizeable community out there which is voicing its concern over this issue.
But even if we assume that Afzal is indeed guilty and that the death penalty in his case is justified, isn’t it going bit too far by constantly asking for his death, and pushing him in front of others who are waiting for their turn at the hangman’s? He has filed a petition before the President asking for clemency and there are many other clemency appeals along with his. Can’t we just wait a little longer before a decision is taken on this matter? Why, indeed, this ‘blood lust’?
There are so many angles to this issue that it does deserve more than a cursory look. Should Afzal’s hanging be demanded when on the other hand a pardon is being sought for Sarabjit? Sarabjit Singh has been held guilty for bombings in Lahore and Multan in 1990 that left 14 people dead. He was to be executed on April 30. However, the intervention of the Indian government led to the execution being postponed by Pakistan. Afzal is convicted for conspiracy and treason against the Indian State. The Supreme Court says that, "…the incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." This, even after there are plenty of questions still unanswered in Afzal’s prosecution case. What happens to the collective conscience of the society when after some years of hanging Afzal it comes to light that he was actually innocent?
As said earlier, even if Afzal’s guilt is corroborated, his execution before others in the list seems totally unexplicable. A death penalty is given in the rarest of rare case. So, if there are twenty people who have been awarded the death sentence; each of the twenty crimes must have been of the highest order deserving such a sentence. Now to pick and choose one among them for a prior execution over others defeats the very premise on which a death sentence is awarded. The moment Afzal’s execution is pushed up the order on the executioner’s list; the nature of Afzal’s crime would be deemed to be far more serious thus implying that the rest of the convicts did not commit a ‘rarest of rare’ crime! It is absurd to first classify a crime as ‘rarest of rare’ and then again choose from such the ‘rarest of the rarest of rare’. The fact that the parliament, the heart of Indian democracy, was attacked is not reason enough for an early execution of Afzal. This fact does not make Afzal’s case any more special than that of the person, ahead of him on the death list, who might have brutally killed someone thus earning a death penalty for himself.
It doesn’t smell fishy here. Rather, it stinks of cheap politics. Afzal’s fate has too many threads attached to it. There is the threat of making a martyr out of him if he gets hanged. This would be too hot to handle in the already volatile Kashmir. Letting him off with a life sentence might appear as an act of vote bank politics; and at the same time not letting him off might also result the same with only the difference that the vote bank will now appear saffron instead of green.
In all this, the fight for providing Afzal a just trial has been lost. What awaits him is indeed a matter of conjecture.