New Delhi, June 8
On death row for the last three years, India’s most controversial convict,
Mohammed Afzal, wants a speedy conclusion to his ordeal and says Bharatiya
Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani would act swiftly in
deciding his plight one way or the other while the present government is
dilly-dallying over his death sentence. “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,” said Afzal, convicted for the December
2001 Indian parliament attack in an exclusive interview to IANS in Tihar
prison's Jail No 3.
“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,” said Afzal, who has been in solitary confinement
in the Capital’s high- security Tihar Jail. Incidentally, Advani has
criticised the delay in carrying out the death sentence. “I fail to
understand the delay. They have increased my security. But what needs to be
done immediately is to carry out the court's orders,” Advani had remarked in
November 2006.
In this rare interview, Afzal’s first since he was convicted by the
Supreme Court in 2004 that was subsequently upheld a year later, he says the
death sentence had made him delusional. He, too, has filed a mercy
petition-along with 40 others-that is pending before the president.
Cumbersome legal procedures and prolonged periods of solitary confinement,
he said, were inhuman and cruel.
Psychologists call this condition the “death-row phenomenon”, in which
prisoners spending years awaiting their execution go through excruciating
mental torture, a fact that was recognised by the European Court of Human
Rights in 1989.
“Life has become hell in the jail. I requested the government to take an
immediate decision over my sentence just two months ago. I don’t wish to be
part of the living dead,” said Afzal, whose moods swung frequently between
being stoic and being defiant. I have also requested that till the time they
(government) take a decision, they shift me to a Kashmir jail,” said Afzal,
who now sports a long black beard.
Dressed in a spotless white kurta-pyjama and a sports cap to hide his shaven
head, Afzal, who is in his mid-30s, said he sympathised with Sarabjit Singh, an
Indian lodged in a Pakistan prison for nearly two decades, but said no parallel
could be drawn between the two of them.
“Please don’t compare me with Sarabjit. The issues are separate. My
sympathies are with him, but my fight is for the Kashmir conflict. Now, I am
not even seeking any clemency and have no objection to the government deciding
my fate.” Last month Home Minister Shivraj Patil’s controversial statement
saying those demanding Afzal’s hanging could not seek reprieve for Sarabjit
Singh drew considerable publicity.
“If you are asking for Afzal Guru’s hanging, then how can you ask for
pardon for Sarabjit Singh?” Patil had asked.
Sarabjit Singh has been held guilty for bombings in Lahore and Multan in
1990 that left 14 people dead. He was to be executed April 30. However, the
intervention of the Indian government led to the execution being postponed by
Pakistan.
Afzal, also known as Afzal Guru, was convicted of conspiracy in the December
2001 attack on the Parliament that killed six security personnel and one
civilian.
“I long for my eight-year-old son, Ghalib. In jail, it is not possible to
meet them easily as intelligence officials unnecessarily harass my family and
wife, Tabassum, when they come here,” he remarked.
In jail, Afzal is reading a book called “India wins freedom” by Maulana
Abul Kalam Azad that details events of the country’s independence movement. —
IANS
