The hanging of Afzal Guru has invited criticism from different parts of the country and abroad as well and has resulted in the seemingly rupture of peace and calm in the valley. The echo of the dislike reached the national capital when a group of Kashmiri students, along with other human rights activists, joined the protest at the Jantar Mantar. Once again the biased attitude of the police and the communal forces came to light when the police lathi-charged the students who were protesting. The students were attacked by a group of RSS-BJP workers and when they finished beating them up, they were then detained by the police and were taken to the Mandir Marg police station. At this attitude of police, Gautam Navlakha, a renowned human rights activist, said, “It was difficult to tell the police from the Bajrang Dal. The role of the state in promoting right-wing communalism is only too obvious. It is becoming a regular and well established practice.”
Apart from the protest by the Kashmiri students, there are many others who raised and are raising their voices to the injustice that the state has done. The following are some of the responses from what began to pour in after the execution of Afzal:
“The tearing hurry with which Afzal Guru was hanged, accompanied by the flouting of all established norms by not giving his family their legal right to meet him before taking him to the gallows, clearly indicates that there were political considerations behind taking this step…. Such a surreptitious action of the government also deprives the family of Afzal Guru to right to seek legal remedy.”
– Prabhakar Sinha (President, national PUCL ), V Suresh (national General Secretary) , Prem Krishan Sharma ( President, PUCL, Rajasthan) and Kavita Srivastava ( Gen. sec PUCL Rajasthan)
“Now he has been hanged, I hope our collective conscience has been satisfied. Or is our cup of blood still only half full?”
– Arundhati Roy in The Guardian, 10 February 2013
The execution was “legally and morally unjustified and hasty as he did not get a fair trial in the first place. At best, he was a secondary player. He did not take part in the actual attack.”
– Dr. Zafarul-Islam Khan, President, All India Muslims Majlis-e-Mushawarat
“Hasty and surreptitious execution, denial of last wish, denial of rights of survivors to perform last rites are serious charges…. The very collective conscience of the society, which was supposed to be satisfied by imposing the death penalty upon Afzal Guru, appears to be outraged by the manner and procedure of its execution…. What an irony that your advocacy of commutation of death sentence of killers of India’s beloved leader Rajiv Gandhi, a highly humane and noble gesture, is now being made out to be the mark of double standard and discrimination against a particular community…. Letter of 200 academics, legal luminaries, journalists, writers, social workers and human rights activists to the President of India ‘in deep anguish, despair but outrage as well’, bears testimony to this.”
– Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, general secretary Maulana Mahmood Madani
“The Congress party sat on this case all this time and now when it was facing a tough political situation, it decided to execute the 2001 Parliament attack case convict.”
– Dr. Tasleem Rahmani, Leader, Welfare Party of India
“There is ample documentation to demonstrate that Afzal Guru’s trial was vitiated; that his legal defence was compromised; that fabricated and forged evidence was submitted to, and accepted by the court, the highest of which, admitted while sentencing him to death that this was done to satisfy the ‘collective conscience of the nation.’ We strongly oppose the cold-blooded execution of Afzal Guru.”
– Resolution of several civil society activists at the second Shahid Azmi Memorial Lecture
HRW urged the Prime Minister by saying “end this distressing use of executions as a way to satisfy some public opinion.”
– Human Rights Watch
“Serious questions have been raised about the fairness of Afzal Guru’s trial…. Before Ajmal Kasab’s execution, Indian authorities used to make information about the rejection of mercy petitions and dates of execution public prior to any execution…. The new practice of carrying out executions in secret is highly disturbing.”
– Shashi Kumar Velath, Director, Amnesty International, India
“There can hardly be any doubt that the family ought to have been first informed and prepared, and should have been given a special opportunity to meet Guru before he was hanged.” The execution was “serious omission in the administration of human rights.”
– Gopal Subramanium, Public Prosecutor
“…the authorities took the comical position of informing the victim’s family by Speed Post. Obviously it was done in a calculated manner so that the victim and his family could be denied the legal provision of a last meeting before the hanging.”
– Communist Party of India
“On the one hand, we have a government that talks about pardoning a person like Kishori Lal, who brutally massacred 34 people, on the other, we have persons belonging to the minority communities being hanged.”
– Avtar Singh Makkar, Chief, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC)
“It is no good to regret the inability of the government to deny Afzal’s family a last mandatory meeting with him or deny his body to the family…. This (Afzal’s execution) reduces Mahatma Gandhi’s country, the world’s largest democracy and a genuine candidate for super power status, to a banana republic.”
– Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, Former Union Home Minister
“There is a matter that is pending before the Supreme Court saying that a delay in disposal of mercy petition can be a ground for remission. The matter is pending so till I’m told there is an order saying that no execution should take place…. Can you bring life back? The judicial process will only be on paper. What will be the point? What legal remedy can there be against a man who has been hanged.”
– Kamini Jaiswal, Supreme Court Lawyer
“Whatever is done is extra judicial. His wife was also not informed. Wife has right to meet him before something happened. He never got a fair trial.”
– SAR Gilani, Professor, Delhi University