Supreme Court advocate Kamini Jaiswal has said that the hanging of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru was purely fueled by political considerations since there was a petition in the Supreme Court that challenged if death sentence should be given if it is not implemented within a certain time period.
“The question is when there are doubts and when the conviction is purely on circumstantial evidence what is the need for the hurry in carrying out the sentence? Only to get political mileage given elections are round the corner,” Jaiswal told CNN-IBN‘s Rajdeep Sardesai in an interview.
AFP
According to the Jaiswal, who had represented Guru in the past, currently there is a petition in the Supreme Court which seeks that death penalties delayed beyond a point should be commuted to life sentence.
The Supreme Court is still hearing the matter and there was no need for the government to jump ahead with this sentence, she said.
“Why did the govt want to over-reach the Supreme Court?” Jaiswal said.
She also questioned the sudden hurry to hang Guru after keeping him in a ‘death cell’ in Tihar jail for years, which she said was worse than any form of punishment.
“If you give a person a death sentence then what is the need to keep him in a death cell for eight years? Have any of them seen what a death cell is like?”
She also said the rights of Guru had been violated in the swift carrying out of the death sentence in this case.
Guru’s wife had not been informed that their representation against the hanging had been rejected despite it being their right, Jaiswal said, adding that Guru’s rights had been ignored.
