AFP, Mumbai :India on Thursday executed convicted bomb plotter Yakub Memon for his role in a series of co-ordinated attacks that killed hundreds of people in Mumbai in 1993, television stations reported.Memon was hanged at Nagpur jail in the western state of Maharashtra in the early hours of the morning, according to the NDTV andCNN-IBN news channels, after last-ditch pleas for clemency were rejected.The Bombay Stock Exchange, the offices of Air India and a luxury hotel were among about a dozen targets of the March 1993 blasts, which killed 257 people in the deadliest attacks ever to hit India.They were believed to have been staged by Mumbai’s Muslim-dominated underworld in retaliation for anti-Muslim violence that had killed more than 1,000 people.In the days before his execution, it emerged that Memon had helped Indian intelligence crack the case and establish a link to neighbour and arch-rival Pakistan over the bombings.”It’s extremely sad that India has gone ahead, we had been hoping India will now call for a moratorium,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “But it’s very welcome that now there seems to be a growing debate around this in India.”In a sequence of events, a Supreme Court panel held an unprecedented hearing in the early hours of Thursday, before rejecting Memon’s last-ditch plea for a 14-day delay in execution. Several previous pleas had also been rejected.Execution of Yakub Memon cruel and inhuman: Amnesty International IndiaAmnesty international India said that the execution of Yakub Memon marks another disappointing use of death penalty in India.”This morning, the Indian government essentially killed a man in cold blood to show that killing is wrong,” said Aakar Patel, Executive Director, Amnesty International India. “This execution will not deliver justice for the 1993 Mumbai blasts. It is a misguided attempt to prevent terrorism, and a disappointing use of the criminal justice system as a tool for retribution.”
