Afzal Guru hanged

Afzal Guru, the key collaborator of the Pakistani jihadis who attacked Parliament on December 13, 2001, was hanged at Tihar Jail in Delhi at 7.30 am on Saturday, bringing a sense of closure to the audacious terror attack that could have wiped out a section of India’s political leadership and brought the two nations to war.
The terror attack, in which a group of five Pakistanis from Maulana Masood Azhar’s Jaish-e-Mohammed managed to enter the Parliament premises, had resulted in nine deaths. But its impact went far beyond—it brought India and Pakistan to an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation as a seething A B Vajpayee government ordered the country’s biggest military mobilization, Operation Parakram.
The Pakistani jihadis had planned to kill as many Indian parliamentarians as they could and take the rest hostage. They were planning to emulate fellow Jaish jihadis who had earlier secured the release of their leader Masood Azhar and US journalist Daniel Pearl’s killer Omar Sheikh by hijacking an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in December 1999.
Coming just after the 9/11 attack in New York, the Parliament strike also vividly brought home the enormity of India’s terror challenge, leading to the enactment of special anti-terror law, POTA, and a new era of heightened security typified by a fortification of Parliament and modernization of the country’s security apparatus.
Guru, who helped plot the offensive and arranged logistics for the Pakistani attackers, was not informed until around 5 am on Saturday about his impending death. He had, however, sensed something was afoot when the jail authorities vacated the cells next to his. The terrorist looked tense and skipped his dinner on Friday and was stunned when the death warrant was read out on Saturday morning.
According to Tihar jail sources, Guru looked dazed when he was asked to sign certain documents. He bathed and offered namaz before six jail warders marched him to the scaffold. He was handed to the executioner at around 7.30 am and was pronounced dead at 8 am.
Given the far-reaching changes brought about by his actions, Guru’s hanging—the second in three months for sensational terror attacks after Ajmal Kasab’s on November 21, 2012—was kept an ultra -secret affair in order to avert repercussions in Jammu & Kashmir and dodge last minute legal challenges.
The Centre informed Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah about Guru’s execution just 12 hours before it took place.
With Afzal Guru hanged, eight cases involving mercy petitions of 13 death row convicts are pending before the home ministry. President Pranab Mukherjee had sent these cases to the MHA for a re-look in October-November. Afzal’s was the fourth case disposed of by Mukherjee.
The government’s decision to bury Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru inside Tihar’s Jail No. 3 in the maximum security prison complex, just like another Kashmiri terrorist Maqbool Butt who was hanged in 1984, was aimed at preventing the grave from becoming a rallying point for pro-Pakistan secessionists from J&K.
Guru’s family members and counsel claimed that they had been kept in the dark about the execution and insisted that the body should have been handed over to them. Guru’s hanging, 11 years after the attack by ISI-backed JeM and seven years after Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence awarded to him, was preceded by a wrenching and highly politicized debate on the long delay in carrying out this capital punishment. But the government moved swiftly once it made up its mind.
The political go-ahead saw the home ministry recommending to the President that Guru’s mercy petition be rejected on January 21. The President sent his concurrence on February 3. The following day, Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde ordered quick compliance with the SC order, leading the home ministry to approach a magistrate to set the date for an early morning hanging. Guru completed his march to the gallows in six days —from the President rejecting the mercy petition to execution—in contrast to the 16 days taken by Kasab.
Continuing taunts from the BJP that Guru was kept alive because of vote-bank politics, which became louder with the arrival of tough-talking Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi on the national stage, shrank further the government’s options. Sources said the government’s recommendation to the President to reject Guru’s mercy petition followed a political go ahead from the Congress leadership. The party reaffirmed its stand in internal deliberations around 10 days ago, ensuring the government stayed the course.
The exact timing points to a sense of urgency since it was at odds with the strong view of the J&K government that the hanging be carried out during chillia khalan — the 45-day spell of peak winter starting December 15 when freezing temperatures make cross-border infiltration and jihadi mobilization difficult. However, the government did follow the other advice from the J&K government — to carry out the execution only on weekends in order to eliminate the possibility of secessionists using Friday prayers to whip up passions.

Hundreds of troops carrying automatic rifles patrolled deserted streets and curfew imposed across the Kashmir Valley early Saturday as news of Afzal Guru’s hanging in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail swept through the snow-covered towns. But despite the bandobast, sporadic protests flared up in parts of the Valley and groups of young men defied curfew and stoned security forces in Sopore, Guru’s hometown, Baramulla in North Kashmir and Pulwama in South Kashmir.
Cable TV networks were suspended along with internet across the Valley to prevent activists from organizing protests using social media. The lifeline Srinagar-Jammu highway was barricaded and separatist leaders put under house-arrest. A police spokesman said six people, including four policemen, were hurt in clashes with protesters.
Protests were also reported from Jammu, Banihal, Bhaderwah, Kishtwar and Doda districts. CM Omar Abdullah said he was caught unaware about the rejection of Guru’s mercy plea. Sources said the Srinagar administration was told of Guru’s hanging by authorities in New Delhi around 5 am and ordered to put arrangements in place to deal with protests.
Authorities in Srinagar and other major towns made announcements through loudspeakers, warning people to remain indoors. Heavy deployment of paramilitary and police forces was reported particularly from Srinagar’s Maisuma locality and other sensitive areas across the Valley. Reports said separatist leader Hilal Waar tried to defy curfew at Maisuma, but was chased away along with his supporters.