Abolition of capital punishment: CM urged to take lead

Madurai, Nov 15 (UNI) Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has been urged to take the lead in commuting sentences of those awaiting the gallows in the state and give an impetus to the movement against capital punishment, gaining momentum in the wake of the Afzal Guru case.

Welcoming the Chief Minister's views on death penalty in a recent statement, Tamil Nationalist Front leader Thiagu called upon him not to be content with mere expression of his intent.

The senior DMK leader should move further beyond words and act, by reducing the sentences of those facing the hangman's noose, including those convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case, he noted.

Addressing a seminar organised by the Campaign against Capital Punishment here last evening, he pointed out that under Article 161 of the Constitution, the Governor, acting on the advice of the Council of Ministers, was empowered to grant clemency. It was a parallel power to that vested with the President under Article 172.

Mr Karunanidhi's gesture in this direction would provide the much needed thrust to the campaign against death by judicial diktat, said Thiagu, who himself returned from the jaws of death, after being awarded death sentence in a sensational 'annihilation' case in the 70s, who translated Karl Marx's 'Das Capital' into Tamil.

Criticising the award of capital punishment to Afzal, he said many knots in the 'conspiracy theory' were yet to be unraveled.

Further, in his opinion, most death sentences had political conspiracy behind them.

Speaking on the occasion, Tamil Nationalist Movement leader Pazha Nedumaran called for a people's movement to get capital punishment repealed from the statutes. Recalling the words of Mahatma Gandhi, he said no one had the right to take away a life created by God.

In his view, Afzal was charged and found guilty in the Parliament attack case on the basis of confessions secured by police through coercion. It was not dissimilar to Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case, he said.

Drawing a parallel with Bhagat Singh, the martyred freedom fighter who was hanged for hurling bombs in the Central Hall of Parliament, he said in the case of Afzal the root cause of the problem was the Indian Army's abuses and rights violations in Kashmir.

Mr Nedumaran said terrorism in the country could not be wiped out so long as nationalist aspirations of different 'nationalities' were crushed. Urging the Government not to succumb to the pressure of the Hindutva combine, demanding immediate hanging of Afzal, he described the Sangh Parivar's 'cacophony' as uncivilsed. When the country's justice system and law enforcement agencies required urgent reforms to free them from the clutches of political interference, the verdict in Afzal's case would lack credibility, he felt.

The speakers including Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam General Secretary Hyder Ali, T Pandian of Tamil Peoples' Cultural Front, TNF Convenor P Maniarasan and Thiyagi Immanuel Peravai leader P Chandrabose, questioned the Supreme Court's justification of the death penalty in ''rarest of rare cases''. What was the criteria and yardstick for deciding such cases, they asked.

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