Well firstly i don’t believe in death to the ultimate form of punishment. Because it causes no pain and instils no fear. If he is really guilty then i advocate punishment which is stretched out and continuous. So that people who look at him fear this. What’s the big deal in death? one shot and its over!

Shankar,
Exactly but then people usually ignore such provocations and then categorize people as leftist and rightist. See here

I wont say that i also do not support capital punishment but then the reason has to be justified. In this era of corruption and people being extremely prejudiced, i suppose capital punishment is not justified. Because you are never sure the conspiracy behind a judgement. (read the the courtroom scene?)

disapponited. again.

I’d agree with you if you talked abt the death penalty, abt its fairness and abt its place in this world. but you predictably delve into more conspiracy theories. i’m surpirsed you did not say Tina is jewish.

yes afzal may have been harrassed. and he signed up for it when he decided to become a terrorist. he’s not being punished for being a target of harrassment or because of his faith. he’s being punished because he was responsible for the death of many.

on another blog there is comparison, suppose in malegaon a terrorist from Gujarat is caught and he’s given capital punishment. and then Naredra modi himself pleads for clemency for him. hmmm… now that will be a nice post on all the hypocritical sites. all of you conspiracy theorists losing your sleep to save that man. ha. that will be the day.

don’t you feel amazed that all these conspiracies are hatched around the world with such effectiveness? i mean roaping in the D lawyer, just perfect. and just for this one occassion, jewish Tina married D years ago. wow. i’ve heard in return in Gujarat the govt is allowing hindus to convert to judaism without any paperwork… wasn’t something like this posted on IM recently? some kind of inter religion deal? boy this is crazy. this is becoming a mass mania now.

Great Analysis & Portrait of Afzal’s case, I recommend, you should publish this story at merinews.com to get a greater visibility and possibly made a change.

Ok, as I said,he may have been tortured, but that does not make him innocent. conspiracy theories are always backed by ‘reasoning’ and even videos these days. have you not seen the ‘real’ 9-11 video. you can write a post on it. take note.

i’ve not categorized your site as hypocritical, but yes the post. is hypocrisy when you use double standards to justify, protect or save something with which you share sympathies. this guy has had all the avenues open to him at different levels. he had all the rights an Indian citized has, and far more rights than the innocent people who died and die even today. then why the effort to discredit the judiciary? were not two of his accomplices aquitted by the same system? or did tina have a soft corner for them? see if you try to save him on human rights grounds, its still ok, but your attempt to discredit the system makes you a friend of the terrorists. police is bad, army is bad, judiciary is bad, media is bad, laws are bad, national songs are bad, nationalism is bad… perfect justification of cynicism.

if the letter names someone, they are not required to give an explanation. its not required under any law anywhere in the world. it does not make the trial a farce. his wife will make every effort to save him, i have sympathies for her and her family. thats why i’m better as a human being than him, and thats probaly why the ‘evil’ system is not out to get me.

don’t blame me for the jewish and gujarat mention. i’m not the one making up these fantastic stories. and don’t even make me start on what the author of that post on IM writes. he’s always trying to discredit the system. like ‘police fire on praying crowd in Bhiwandi’- lies and lies. just to discredit the police. so that its easy to justify the 30odd injured policemen and the two who were burned alive. not to mention the police now have to ask the local goons for their permission before building a police station on their own land.

Of course it is double standard. after the malegaon blasts you wrote ( i think on IM) that the media is not ready to believe that a Hindu can be a terrorist. without any proof whatever (and after all the weapons and RDX that was seized in malegaon just months ago), you were making up stories (again, discrediting the media. now if malegaon police find any hindus, its fine but if they find more mmmm ‘misguided youth’ then you will have to discredit the police too), but when this guy has been fairly (yes its fair by Indian standards) convicted in a long, elaborate, public process, you are busy discrediting the judiciary.

when you purposely discredit everything that this nation is, then you cross the line of a civil dialogue.

I’m sorry, but i did not bring in religion in the nalanda post. it was you who left out a particular part from a wikipedia article - a part that had mention of a particular religion. you made the religion bit conspicious by omission, i just brough it your attention. and second thing, there is nothing ‘religion’ abt history. say it as it is.

its sad if afzal could not afford the best legal help ( which is very good at getting even criminals freed ), but that still does not mean his trial was a farce. most criminals in india are poor and can’t afford the jethmalanis. may be all those humane souls on streets of srinagar threatening a bloodbath now ought to have helped.

and there is nothing funny abt defending a terrorist.

Ajit Bhattacharjea is a former Director, Press Institute of India has this to say.

Justice must be seen to have been done, especially in a case involving an attack on Parliament House. The Supreme Court did not find any evidence in the charge that Guru was a member of a terrorist gang or organisation. He was not directly involved in the attack or the planning, which was masterminded by three persons in Pakistan. Even if guilty as a conspirator, the view taken by the Court raises more questions than it answers.

Even so, Afzal’s account of inadequate facilities for defence, the circumstantial nature of the evidence and other trial inadequacies seem sufficient to provide the scintilla of doubt about his guilt required to merit Presidential clemency. It will be too late to make amends if evidence to the contrary is found after he is hanged.

He then talks about the way media and security agencies handles such cases

With stories concerning national security certain to get headlines, intelligence agencies try to exploit mediapersons to substantiate their charges and embarrass the defence. Hints are dropped about activities that further damage the suspect’s reputation or weaken his case. In the Gilani case, a newspaper reported that he had confessed his guilt, which he had not. In the Guru case, his counsel was quoted as suggesting that he preferred death by lethal injection to hanging, an implicit admission of guilt. He denied admitting any such preference. Intelligence personnel are keen on publicity. Arrangements to be filmed or photographed with a ‘catch’ is part of the routine; presumably with hopes of a reward.

His whole argument is based on some Iftikhar Gilani who was detained unlawfully but was later released due to mounting pressure from his supporters

The primary evidence produced by the police was a document on the hard disk of Gilani’s computer with details of the number of Indian security forces in Kashmir. But this was not secret information. It was, as he pleaded, a paper by one Nazir Kamal already published in the journal of the Pakistan Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad Papers, and taken from their website. Offers to demonstrate this by securing other copies of the paper or contacting the website were ignored. Gilani’s copy was doctored to make it appear secret. These and other details of the frantic efforts of the prosecution, and the officials behind it, to frame Gilani are detailed in his book, My Days in Prison. Fortunately, the patent failure of justice became impossible to justify and he was released on January 13, 2003. But for the influential friends who pursued his case, he may still have been in jail. The maximum sentence prescribed for an offence under the Official Secrets Act is 14 years.

Kashmir is familiar with stories of people being framed, of militants claimed killed by the security forces turning out to be innocent civilians, of young men disappearing without trace. Suspicions are reinforced when it is found that in Delhi, intelligence agencies are not above fabricating or distorting evidence to get credit for catching persons painted as threats to national security. In both Afzal and Gilani’s cases, evidence of fabrication surfaced during hearings.

Now what do you have to say? See all these are possibilities and you just cannot deny them. Being passionate about a terrorist’s execution is normal but then we have to be sure particularly in this era of corruption. I wonder why you fail to appreciate this fact that the whole case might have been influenced and Afzal because of this poverty couldn’t defend himself. Believe me its not about Afzal and me being from the same religion but its about being a human!
 

Why is it that every time a member of a certain monotheistic religion indulging in terrorism sans compare is brought under scrutiny that all forms of conspiracy theories start doing the rounds. It was the FBI terror nexus drivel after the 9/11 attacks and now in the clemency petition filed for Afzal has taken conspiracy theories to unprecedented highs. So if you believe Afzal’s wife it was the “BAD” Security guys who made poor old lamb Afzal to commit all these horrible crimes and to make matters worse the Judge had an ongoing affair with the wife of the Defence Counsel, so the “Big Bad Judge” sent our poor lamb
Afzal to the gallows.

It seems that the whole world is conspiring against Afzal. So in case the Presidential review comes out with a finding that Afzal deserves nothing less than a noose around his little lamb neck, what will the conspiracy theorists come up with? May it will be along the lines that President Kalam is not a faithful member of RoP.

With the whole world conspiring against him, I think it will be unfair to deny Afzal a prompt audience with Allah.

Dan,
I agree that these controversy theories but then you are comparing apple with oranges. Afzal wife wrote that letter and its not a concocted theory!

Hiren,
I agree that death penalty cannot be a deterrent and plus there are chances that the verdict might be wrong and thus an innocent life is lost.

Thirumalai dasan.K,
Its not about the number of people who are killed but its about the issue at hand. Kashmir gets preference over other states because its related to international terrorism. People are not interested in knowing how many poor die each day but they are eager to raise their voices against atrocities in Kashmir.

It really is a thin line..death penalty by court and by those policemen..but then those policemen fired in defence and its their duty to do so. I don’t think those can be compared. A court has full control over the verdict.

Dear Vinaya,
You say

Also, as Muslim scholars say Quran was revealed by GOD and it advocates for uncivilized punishments to criminals

How to term any punishment as uncivilized? If hanging someone in presence of an audience is uncivilized then what is civilized? Such public executions instil fear in the hearts and would certainly prevent someone from committing the crime. I highly recommend the same for any democracy…not sure about corrupt politicians but at least they should be jailed. The problem lies within our system in which justice can be bought and hence these politicians never get punished.

Dear Vinaya,
I will go through that link and get back to you asap.