Pending a final decision for almost six months now, the mercy petition of Mohammed Afzal Guru, the death row convict in the Parliament attack case, has bounced back into international reckoning with the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering, raising the issue during a meeting with President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in Strasbourg last week.
The fact that Pottering broached the issue is a victory for British and European human rights campaigners who have said there has been a “miscarriage of justice”. But the BJP has denounced the European Parliament’s interference in an internal issue of India. Kalam, who has only a few months to go before he remits office, has clarified that the fate of Afzal Guru will be decided as per “the law of the land”.
Questions: Should Afzal Guru be pardoned given the facts of the case and the mounting international pressure? Or should India cock a snook at the rights’ activists and hang him, regardless of the diplomatic ramifications? If Afzal Guru is pardoned, should all the other 22 mercy petitions before the President be dealt with similarly? Is the UPA government buying time and playing votebank politics? Or is it being fair and just in dealing with a human life?
churumuri 
No paradon, but definately justice should be delivered to him. Yes not the consience of the nation bullshit but justice based on facts, also not the mood of the nation or the rightist desire.
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Extradite him to EU along with Zulfi and co.
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Perhaps the EU is more forgiving of people who want to destroy democracy and democratic institutions.
To give Mohammed Afzal a comfortable stay in jail under the benevolent gaze of human rights ‘activists’, is perhaps the EU of tackling terrorism that happens in the sub-continent.
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Afzal Guru should be pardoned; that’s my personal opinion. Capital punishment is State-sponsored murder and we can’t follow the medieval rule of eye for an eye. Let us remember that we come from the land of Gandhi and let us also remember his brilliant quote: If we continue with eye for an eye, the whole world will become blind.
People will always say that offenders are executed in full public view in Saudi Arabia. But then, thank god we are not Saudi Arabia and we do not want a vindictive justice system that seeks to level things rather than contribute to the healing process.
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