MUMBAI, India
A last minute plea for a stay of execution for Yakub Memon, convicted of plotting bomb attacks in Mumbai that killed 257, was rejected by India’s president on Wednesday night, local media reported.
He is due to be hanged on Thursday, his 54th birthday, for his role in the 1993 attacks in India’s financial capital.
President Pranab Mukherjee rejected the final appeal during a two-hour meeting with Home Minister Rajnath Singh, broadcaster NDTV reported.
Memon’s lawyers are petitioning the Supreme Court to seeking a 14-day delay but it is not clear whether the move is tenable and it seems likely he will be hanged at 7 a.m. local time (0130GMT) in Nagpur, central Maharashtra state.
Mukherjee also rejected a July 26 petition signed by more than 300 eminent Indians, including former Supreme Court judges, senior lawyers and politicians, calling for mercy.
Earlier on Wednesday, judges rejected Memon’s defense team’s argument that the death penalty should be rescinded due to procedural lapses.
“Yakub’s every option has now [been] exhausted,” Soli Sorabjee, a senior lawyer and India’s former attorney general, told reporters after the court ruling.
Memon’s execution would be India’s fourth in the last 15 years. According to an Amnesty International report, Indian courts sentenced 64 people to death in 2014.
The series bombings - seen as retaliation for the destruction of the Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh and the subsequent anti-Muslim riots in 1992 - saw more than 700 people injured.
The confirmation of Memon’s death penalty came on the same day the Supreme Court rejected a federal government petition against the life terms given to the killers of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in place of previous death sentences.
Memon, a chartered accountant, was sentenced to death in July 2007 by a special anti-terrorism court in Mumbai for planning the bombings with others, including his older brother. He was convicted of transporting explosives and arranging for travel to Pakistan for training.
He has consistently denied any wrongdoing, maintaining he only discovered his brother’s involvement after the attacks.
In March 2013, the Supreme Court upheld Memon’s death penalty on the grounds that he was the mastermind behind the attacks. Repeated attempts to have his penalty quashed have been rejected since 2013.
He is the only one of 11 people convicted for the attacks to have his death sentence upheld on appeal.
