Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu
Reacting to the debate on 1993 Bombay Blasts convict Yakub Memon's hanging last week, Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu has controversially said: "Do they want reservation in hanging?"
Memon was hanged on July 30, 22 years after the serial blasts across Mumbai in which 257 people were killed. The chartered accountant was convicted in 2007 of helping plan what was India's worst terror attack.
"Some people on the day (APJ Abdul) Kalam was buried, were giving more attention to another case. Then some in the media gave numbers of who was hanged as per community figures," Mr Naidu said to reporters today.
"If the facts are made known, people talking about this would be silenced. In the recent past 36 people were hanged. Maqbool Bhatt, Afzal Guru, Kasab and Yakub Memon. All others are there, I don't want to name the community. Till today full facts have come - since independence how many people have been hanged... Do you want reservation in hanging also? I'm not able to understand," he said.
Memon's execution has revived the larger debate on capital punishment. A section of the civil society -- including politicians and legal experts -- had urged the President to grant him mercy. But Memon was hanged after a middle-of-the-night Supreme Court hearing on his 11th hour attempt to stop his death sentence.
Among those who voiced their disapproval was Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who said: "State-sponsored killing diminishes us all by reducing us to murderers too."
Some have argued that more than Yakub Memon, it was his brother Tiger Memon who should have been punished. Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim, the main accused in the blasts case, have been missing since 1993.
Yesterday, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval said at a function that it was "completely wrong to say India could not catch Tiger so caught Yakub. Yakub and Tiger are standalone. Inter linkage is incorrect."