National

Death for Afzal is too harsh, says Farooq

Farooq Abdullah

New Delhi: The former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah has said the death punishment to Mohammad Afzal, convicted in the Parliament attack case, is "too extreme," and fears for the life of the judges who have sentenced him.

The National Conference leader initially told Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN's `Devil's Advocate' programme that Afzal was innocent but later said the sentence was "too harsh."

"You want to hang him? Go ahead and hang him. But the consequences of hanging him must also be remembered. One of the consequences will be ... we have paid the price for Maqbool Bhatt's hanging, by the judge who was shot in Kashmir. Those judges will need to be protected like anything. Some crook will come and will murder them. So my request is, for God's sake, see that they are protected."

He referred to the gunning down of Neelkanth Ganju, who as sessions judge in Kashmir handed down the capital punishment to Bhatt (co-founder of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front) in early 1980s.

Mr. Abdullah also warned that terrorists would do things which would destroy the Hindu-Muslim relationship.

He cited the Mumbai blasts, following which "thousands of Muslims were put in jail to extract information from them."

"I don't want such things to happen in India ... because some crook, some bad man will go and do something in a temple. Somebody will do something in a mosque." Also the peace process with Pakistan would suffer because its President, Pervez Musharraf would have tough time controlling his army chiefs of various regions. "Some army chief might come up and throw him out and if that happens where will the peace process go? It will go back to zero."

Afzal didn't get right lawyer

Mr. Abdullah said Azfal was innocent but the lower court turned down his request for appointment of a defence lawyer.

Had Afzal got the right lawyer in the lower court, it would have been proved that he was not directly involved.

Mr. Abdullah said the Supreme Court judges were "also fallible" and the evidence put forward by the police "is not absolutely infallible."

Later in the interview, he said, "The evidence put forward before the honourable judges has been correctly said [analysed] by them but the sentence passed by them is too extreme. Too harsh."

Asked whether Afzal was no longer innocent and was rightly convicted but the sentencing was wrong, he replied, "Yes, wrong." — PTI

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu