The curative petition of Yakub Memon, principal accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, was rejected by the Supreme Court on Tuesday. With this normal legal options have been exhausted as the review petition was earlier rejected by the apex court. The President had rejected his mercy petition last year. The date of hanging has been set for July 30.
Perhaps the accused will seek to utilise crevices in the template of crime and punishment — such as challenging the grounds on which the mercy petition was turned down, or advance a second mercy petition in his own name — but this could be a long shot, given the nature of the crime. Around 250 people were killed in the Mumbai blasts and the accused was adjudged the “architect” and chief planner and organiser, although he was not held guilty of handling explosives himself. In 2013, the apex court had confirmed the death sentence given by the trial court.
The fact that Yakub Memon had already served 19 years in prison apparently did not weigh with the Supreme Court. It also did not matter that 10 other accused had their death sentences — awarded by the trial court — commuted by the Supreme Court. The apex court also did not deem it a mitigating factor that the accused, who fled to Pakistan after the blasts, returned the following year and cooperated with the investigations, helping out with details of other Indian criminals hiding in Pakistan.
Some of these considerations are apt to be debated, although the horror of the crime will doubtless be a live factor, especially for those who suffered in the serial blasts. The issue does not easily go away, however. In a terrorist crime of a certain magnitude, should the maximum penalty of the death sentence necessarily be carried out when the Supreme Court has held that the death sentence should be pronounced only in the “rarest of the rare” cases? The dictum has helped many escape the gallows, but not all. This is because “rarest of the rare” is a matter of subjective determination on which different judges differ.
There is another consideration. Should a terrorist crime, as distinct from others in which people are killed, be deemed to be a crime against the state, and as such one that will necessarily attract the maximum punishment written down in our law, namely death? If so, then a new jurisprudence will have to be developed.
The Western democracies, barring the US, have done away with the death sentence, choosing instead to opt for long-term imprisonment. Perhaps it is time to set up a deliberative body that will guide our law-makers to reflect in that direction.
