Are We Hanging Yakub Memon In Lieu of Tiger?

It was the calmness with which it happened that took everyone's breath away at the trial court at Arthur Road Jail. The year was 1994. Yakub Memon, accompanied by his wife Raheen, walked into court carrying a baby girl. Not even the policemen knew who they were. There was a quiet dignity about the couple, and it was a while before the court settled down, and all of us realised this was a much-wanted man who had finally been located.  

Yakub Memon claimed in court that he surrendered in July, 1994 to the police in Nepal, over a year after the serial blasts in Mumbai, to clear his name. There are many conflicting versions of just how he returned to India, having left with some of his family members two days before the terror attack.

There were some reports that he was caught in Kathmandu, where he had travelled from Karachi to consult with a lawyer. The police says he was arrested at the New Delhi railway station on August 5, 1994. And when he walked into the TADA court for the first time one month later, he expected to be able to prove that he was innocent and that he had returned to India to help with the investigation.

With the Supreme Court dismissing his last legal option on Tuesday, Memon, who has spent 21 years in jail, is to hang on July 30. Eight days to go.

A year after the serial blasts on March 12, 1993 killed 257 people and injured nearly 700 others, a designated court under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) was hearing the case on a daily basis at Arthur Road Jail. There were over 100 under-trials in prison, and they couldn't be transported to the sessions court everyday. As a result, the high-security precincts of the jail in South Mumbai became the stage for a trial that was to end over a decade later; the families of those who died have often said the long, laborious trial added to the agony of their incredible losses.

Every morning, reporters covering the trial would land up early and present their identity cards for entry. Special passes were issued much later. You had to cross the police barricade and walk past jail barracks before you climbed up a narrow flight of stairs to the makeshift court. Those on trial would be standing around sometimes, smoking, and we would often chat with them. The proceedings went by without any major news break for a while. After the morning sessions, most of us would leave since the afternoons rarely yielded any copy. 

And so, when some members of the Memon family were brought to court in August 1994, few from the media were present. The next morning, a bigger surprise was in store with Yakub being produced, along with wife and child. No one had expected any of the Memons to be caught and presented in person at the TADA court. 

Yakub's defense was that he surrendered to clear his name, and that he also brought with him evidence of Pakistan's involvement in the blasts, much to the delight of the Indian government. He said he had been holed up in a safe house in Karachi and wanted to leave.

 But "Memon" had become synonymous with the blasts - his brother, Tiger, the mastermind along with Dawood Ibrahim, was missing by now - and as Yakub would soon find out, no one bought his story - that he was innocent of planning for the serial blasts. The prosecution said he had not surrendered, discrediting his claim of wanting to help piece together how the terror attack was executed. 

Before the blasts, Yakub was a successful chartered accountant and ran a firm in partnership with a friend. It was the money he made from his businesses, including exporting meat, that financed the flats in Al Hussaini building in Mahim, where the Memons lived, quite close to the local police station.  

Yakub was charged with arranging for young men to go to Pakistan for training, hawala transactions which financed the blasts, and handing over arms and ammunition that would be used in the 12 different explosions at Mumbai landmarks.

Yakub told the court that his relatives and he left the country before the blasts on a vacation for Eid. The court didn't believe Yakub's story, or that he didn't get along with his brother, Tiger.
The judge relied on confessions, some retracted, of his co-accused, and circumstantial evidence to convict him. 

When he was given the death sentence in July 2007 by the TADA court, his younger brothers, Essa, who had a brain tumour, and Yusuf, who suffers from schizophrenia, were given life sentences since they were both ill. His sister-in-law Rubeena, whose van was found with explosives at Worli on the day of the blasts, was also given a life sentence. Usually a quiet man who keenly followed the developments in court, Yakub said this out loud when he heard his sentence - "Oh! My Lord. Forgive this man, he knows not what he does." Then he rushed out of court, muttering that he forgave the judge. 

Later, he said in court famously that he had ignored his brother Tiger's advice to refrain from pulling a "Mahatma Gandhi". Tiger, he said, warned him not to risk returning to India.

The Supreme Court, while upholding the death sentence in his case in 2013, called him one of the "driving spirits" of the 1993 blasts. His father, Abdul Razzak Memon, who was originally called "Tiger", passed away during the trial. One brother, Suleiman, was acquitted along with Yakub's wife, Raheen, and his mother Hanifa. Tiger and his brother Ayub remain in Pakistan, evading trial along with Dawood Ibrahim and several others. 

In keeping with his desire to study, Yakub completed his MA in English literature in 2013 while in jail, and is famous in the Nagpur prison as a voracious reader. 

His lawyer once said even if he is not completely innocent, he may have done nothing to warrant a death penalty. While the evidence in this regard may be debatable, there are enough who point out that Yakub Memon has paid the price for coming back for whatever reason while his brother evades the law. 

(Meena Menon is a journalist since 1984 and was deputy editor, The Hindu.)

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