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Afzal Guru hanged, remains in Tihar; no last wish, refused to eat
Vishwa Mohan, Bharti Jain & Indrani Basu ,TNN | Feb 10, 2013, 01.11AM IST 
NEW DELHI: Afzal Guru, the key collaborator of the Pakistani jihadis who attacked Parliament on December 13, 2001, was hanged at 8am on Saturday, bringing a sense of closure to the audacious terror attack that could have wiped out a section of India's top political leadership and brought the two nations to war.
The terror attack, in which a group of five Pakistanis from Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish e Mohammed managed to enter Parliament premises, resulted in nine deaths. But its impact went far beyond: it brought India and Pakistan to an eyeball-toeyeball confrontation as a seething Vajpayee government ordered the country's biggest military mobilization, Operation Parakram.
The Pakistan jihadis had planned to kill as many Indian parliamentarians as they could and take the rest hostage. They were planning to emulate fellow Jaish jihadis who had earlier secured the release of their leader, Masood Azhar, and Daniel Pearl's killer, Omar Sheikh, by hijacking an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in December 1999.
Coming just after the 9/11 attack in New York, the Parliament attack also vividly brought home the enormity of India's terror challenge, leading to the enactment of special anti-terror law, POTA, and a new era of heightened security typified by a fortification of Parliament and modernization of India's security apparatus.
Guru, who helped plot the attack and arranged logistics for the Pakistani attackers, was not informed until around 5 am Saturday morning about his impending death, although he had sensed something was afoot when jail authorities vacated the cells next to his. The terrorist looked tense and skipped his dinner on Friday and was stunned when the death warrant was read out on Saturday morning.
According to jail sources, Guru was looking dazed when he was asked to sign certain documents. He bathed and offered namaz before six jail warders marched him to the scaffold. He was handed to the executioner at around 7.30am and was pronounced dead at 8am.
Given the far-reaching changes brought about by his actions, Afzal's hanging — the second in three months for sensational terror attacks after Ajmal Kasab's on November 21, 2012 — the hanging was kept an ultra-secret affair in order to avert repercussions in J&K and dodge last-minute legal challenges. The Centre informed J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah about the execution just 12 hours before the hanging.
The decision to bury Guru inside Tihar's Jail No. 3 in the maximum security prison complex, just like another Kashmiri terrorist Maqbool Butt who was hanged in 1984, was aimed to preventing the grave from becoming a rallying point for pro-Pakistan secessionists from J&K.
Guru's family member and counsel claimed that they had been kept in the dark about the execution and insisted that the body should have been handed over to them.
Guru's hanging, 11 years after the attack by ISI-backed JeM and seven years after Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence awarded to him was preceded by a wrenching and highly politicized debate on the long delay in carrying out this capital punishment. But the government moved swiftly once it made up its mind.......................http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=Q0FQLzIwMTMvMDIvMTAjQXIwMDMwMA==&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom
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http://t.co/YxNqydO8
Afzal Guru, who helped plot the attack and arranged logistics for the Pakistani attackers, was not informed until around 5 am Saturday morning about his impending death.
NEW DELHI: Afzal Guru, the key collaborator of the Pakistani jihadis who attacked Parliament on December 13, 2001, was hanged at 8am on Saturday, bringing a sense of closure to the audacious terror attack that could have wiped out a section of India's top political leadership and brought the two nations to war.
The terror attack, in which a group of five Pakistanis from Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish e Mohammed managed to enter Parliament premises, resulted in nine deaths. But its impact went far beyond: it brought India and Pakistan to an eyeball-toeyeball confrontation as a seething Vajpayee government ordered the country's biggest military mobilization, Operation Parakram.
The Pakistan jihadis had planned to kill as many Indian parliamentarians as they could and take the rest hostage. They were planning to emulate fellow Jaish jihadis who had earlier secured the release of their leader, Masood Azhar, and Daniel Pearl's killer, Omar Sheikh, by hijacking an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in December 1999.
Coming just after the 9/11 attack in New York, the Parliament attack also vividly brought home the enormity of India's terror challenge, leading to the enactment of special anti-terror law, POTA, and a new era of heightened security typified by a fortification of Parliament and modernization of India's security apparatus.
Guru, who helped plot the attack and arranged logistics for the Pakistani attackers, was not informed until around 5 am Saturday morning about his impending death, although he had sensed something was afoot when jail authorities vacated the cells next to his. The terrorist looked tense and skipped his dinner on Friday and was stunned when the death warrant was read out on Saturday morning.
According to jail sources, Guru was looking dazed when he was asked to sign certain documents. He bathed and offered namaz before six jail warders marched him to the scaffold. He was handed to the executioner at around 7.30am and was pronounced dead at 8am.
Given the far-reaching changes brought about by his actions, Afzal's hanging — the second in three months for sensational terror attacks after Ajmal Kasab's on November 21, 2012 — the hanging was kept an ultra-secret affair in order to avert repercussions in J&K and dodge last-minute legal challenges. The Centre informed J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah about the execution just 12 hours before the hanging.
The decision to bury Guru inside Tihar's Jail No. 3 in the maximum security prison complex, just like another Kashmiri terrorist Maqbool Butt who was hanged in 1984, was aimed to preventing the grave from becoming a rallying point for pro-Pakistan secessionists from J&K.
Guru's family member and counsel claimed that they had been kept in the dark about the execution and insisted that the body should have been handed over to them.
Guru's hanging, 11 years after the attack by ISI-backed JeM and seven years after Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence awarded to him was preceded by a wrenching and highly politicized debate on the long delay in carrying out this capital punishment. But the government moved swiftly once it made up its mind.......................http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=Q0FQLzIwMTMvMDIvMTAjQXIwMDMwMA==&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom
AND
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=Q0FQLzIwMTMvMDIvMTAjQXIwMjMwMA==&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom
AND
................http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=Q0FQLzIwMTMvMDIvMTAjQXIwMDMwMg==&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom
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http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=Q0FQLzIwMTMvMDIvMTAjQXIwMDYwNA==&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom
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