New Delhi, October 5
Family members of Mohammad Afzal Guru, who is facing execution in the 2001 Parliament attack case, today met President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and sought clemency for him.
Afzal’s wife Tabassum, his mother Ayesha Begum and his seven-year-old son Ghalib met the President for 25 minutes along with lawyers Nandita Haksar and N.D. Pancholi.
“The President assured us that he will go through our petition seeking clemency for Afzal,” Ms Tabassum told newspersons after the meeting at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
“We informed the President that it was one-sided justice and the trial was not fair. We have met the President with the hope that justice would be done and my husband pardoned,” she said.
She maintained that at every stage during the judicial process from the trial court to the Supreme Court, Afzal did not get justice. “He did not even have a lawyer to represent when the matter was heard at the trial court,” she said.
Asked why Afzal had not filed a mercy
petition himself, his wife said, “He lost all hope in the system when he did not receive justice throughout the trial.”
Mr Haksar said the President, who gave a patient hearing, had asked Ghalib about his future plans, to which he responded to by saying that he wanted to be a doctor but his ambition could be fulfilled only if his father was alive.
Meanwhile, the Tihar Jail authorities have put on hold the arrangements for his hanging. “We have been informed that Afzal’s clemency petition is under consideration. So the arrangements for the execution have been put on hold,” jail sources said today.
“We have for the time being stopped the search for the hangman,” the sources said.
