How India hung the wrong Yakub Memon

Exactly 53 years after he was born, Yakub Memon died on his birthday, at the express wish of the people of India. He died because of his disservice to his nation but his death may still be of service to it. The questions that he has raised in his passing are two-fold – one, should the state continue to kill? And two, did he die a martyr to a system of delayed justice?

The debate over death sentence has been much discussed but that aside, what if the Yakub Memon who died was not the Yakub Memon who carried out all the criminal activities that he had been accused of? The Yakub who died was as different a man from the one he was accused of being as you or me are from who we were 20 years ago.

Sit back and think - are you the same person emotionally, intellectually or even physiologically that you were two decades or more before. Are you 40 now? Though you carry the same identity and the same memories from before, are you still the same person who was 20? Think of the mistakes that we made two decades ago. Do we make them still?

Paying for your sins is a concept that best works when the actual sinner pays but 22 years of apparent solitude to mull over your crimes is sure to change a human being. So maybe... just maybe, the Yakub whom we hanged at 53 was not the Yakub at 31 who aided and abetted his brother to kill and maim hundreds in the city of his birth.

Ajmal Kasab was the same Kasab who wielded the AK47, Afzal Guru was the same man who was accused of being complicit in the attack on the Parliament because both payments for sins committed were exacted fairly close to their crimes. In the case of Beant Singh and Rajiv Gandhi's killers, enough time has passed for them to be considered different personalities... different human beings. So not hanging them is in some form justified. Time seems to be working to the advantage of the Gujarat pogrom death row convicts... 13 years have passed and no hangings yet.

Yet Yakub was guilty and Yakub died. He was hanged so we could live on with our collective guilt of being a nation that can also selectively kill.