Late Thursday evening, Fadnavis told the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council, “Yakub Memon was hanged at 7 am at Nagpur Central Jail on Thursday”.
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Memon was hanged hours after the supreme court dismissed a final plea to stay the sentence.
Blasts in Mumbai, then known as Bombay, in 1993 had killed 257 people and Memon was convicted as the “driving spirit” behind the serial blasts in India’s financial capital.
After the first mercy petition was rejected he did not challenge it and on July 22, 2015, after rejection of his curative petition he filed the second mercy petition. “Only miracle can save me”, Memon, finally hanged on Thursday morning, reportedly said. The others had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Yakub’s brother, Suleiman Memon, and cousin Usman, was not seen.
In an interview to Karan Thapar on India Today television channel, Rohatgi, who contested Memon’s plea, said that submitting a mercy petition on the eve of the execution was wrong and Memon should have done it in April 2014 when his mercy petition was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee.
He was the only one of 11 people convicted for the bombings to have his death sentence upheld on appeal.
Yakub’s body was taken directly to Bismillah Manzil in Mahim where his brother Suleiman Memon lives.
“In the present scenario in which India is placed, with all kinds of hostile neighbors, with attacks and terror around the corner every day, it is not appropriate to do away with the death penalty”, Rohtagi said.
All India Majlis-e-Itttehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi demanded the government to exhibit equal vigour, as it exhibited in executing Yakub Memon, to punish the perpetrators of Gujarat communal riots and Sikh riots in Delhi.
The attack also embroiled Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, who is serving time for buying weapons from gangsters accused of orchestrating the bombings. Now 59, Ajmera said the blast broke his ribs and forced him to undergo about 20 surgeries that have cost him thousands of dollars.
The rights group said the execution of Memon was a “misguided attempt to prevent terrorism, and disappointing use of the justice system for retribution”.
DOUGLAS E. CURRAN/AFP/Getty Images A double-decker bus passes the crater of a March 12 bomb blast, one of a series of bombs that rocked the western Indian port city of Mumbai.
Memon’s execution, which took place on his 53rd birthday, followed last-minute efforts by his legal team to delay his sentence.
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Yakub became only the third person – all terrorists – to be executed in the last decade after 26/11 convict Ajmal Kasab in 2012 and Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru a year later.
