New Delhi: Soon after the Supreme Court rejected 1993 bomb blasts convict Yakub Memon's final mercy petition early on Thursday morning paving way fpr him to be hanged to death, his lawyer Annad Grover called the apex court's decision a mistake.
"It was a tragic mistake and a wrong decision. The authorities were hell bent on executing him without giving him the right to challenge the rejection of his mercy petition by the President as right to life of a condemned prisoner lasts till his last breath," Grover said.
Yakub Memon's lawyer Anand Grover had argued that a death row convict is entitled to 14 days reprieve after rejection of mercy plea for various purposes.
Yakub Memon, the lone convict to be sentenced to death in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case, has been hanged to death in the Nagpur Central Prison. Memon was hanged at 6:43 AM on Thursday following a day of intense court room action and an unprecedented night long legal proceeding.
Entire Wednesday and early Thursday morning saw what perhaps Indian judiciary has never done. The petition was heard in Court Room 4 which was opened for an unprecedented 90-minute hearing that started at 3.20 AM and ended a little before dawn.
After Memon's mercy petition was rejected by the apex court on Wednesday evening followed by Maharashtra Governor Chennamaneni Vidyasagar Rao also doing the same and later in the night President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, too refusing to accept his mercy petition, the 1993 Mumbai blasts convict's lawyers knocked the doors of the Supreme Court once again late in the night.
Memon was hanged to death as per the TADA court's order on a day which coincidentally was also his 53rd birthday after the three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, constituted by the Chief Justice of India HL Dattu in the middle of the night, rejected his final mercy petition early on Thursday morning, just hours before the sentence was to be carried out.
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