Uproar in J&K Assembly over Afzal Guru clemency

Uproarious scenes were witnessed in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly, Wednesday, over a resolution seeking clemency for Parliament attack death row convict Afzal Guru.

A resolution seeking clemency for Guru, sentenced to death for his role the December 2001 attack on Parliament, was submitted by Engineer Rashid, an independent MLA in the 87-member state Legislative Assembly.

This morning, as soon as the House convened, Opposition MLAs, primarily from the Jammu region, stormed into the Well of the House demanding that the resolution should not be tabled and taken up for discussion.

Opposition MLAs hold view that the Assembly has no power to discuss the verdict by the apex court of the country.

The Speaker tried to assuage their concerns but the Opposition did not want to listen to him and continued to shout slogans. Following the pandemonium, the House was adjourned for 30 minutes.

State Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had tweeted last month stating that if the J&K Assembly had passed a resolution seeking clemency, similar to the one passed by the Tamil Nadu Assembly seeking clemency for Rajiv Gandhi's killers, the response would not have been muted.

Engineer Rashid, however, maintained that Omar's tweet had nothing to do with his decision to file the resolution.

The opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) has already said its 21 MLAs would vote in favour of the resolution and BJP is opposed to it.

But ruling National Conference and Congress are in a fix over the issue. The NC is finding it difficult to balance the concerns of its local constituency and its position as a member of the United Progressive Alliance at the Centre.

A senior party leader was quoted as saying: "If the party votes for clemency that would weigh heavily on its ruling allies in the Congress at the national level and also in the Jammu region."

"If the NC stays away from vote that would provide a lethal handle to our political adversaries, it is like Shakespeare's Hamlet -- to be or not to be!"

The statements of Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik will also increase the pressure on NC as the separatists have warned that hanging Guru could lead to disastrous consequences.

The Congress, on the other hand, cannot afford to vote in favour of clemency. If it votes against the resolution, and the NC does vote in favour of the resolution, the Congress would find it difficult to shield itself from its political fallout.

Why didn't the bomb explode? Afzal Guru wonders

Why did the bomb, planted in the car used during the 2001 Parliament attack, not explode? This question still puzzles convicted terrorist Afzal Guru, claims a 180-page manuscript by a Tihar jail superintendent.

"If the December 2001 terrorist attack on Parliament was a success then they would have made Jammu and Kashmir an international issue and would have entered into negotiations with the government," Guru -- the key accused in 2001 Parliament terror attack case -- is said to have told Manoj Diwvedi, Superintendent of Tihar Jail number 3.

Divided into six chapters, this document, starts with the attack itself and the first chapter tells the nitty- gritty of all that happened on December 13.

It ends when Guru, on death row, is finally held by the police, Diwedi said.

"They were very confident that the car fitted with improvised explosive device would go off. Guru told me that they had parked the car fitted with bombs and explosives in front of a police the previous night of the attack fearing that it might be stolen. Surprisingly no policeman bothered to check it."

"Sadly, the car bomb used in the December 13, 2001 attack, did not explode and till date Afzal Guru is clueless as to why it did not explode.

"If the attack would have been a success they had also names of people in their minds who they would want to negotiate with," says Diwvedi, who has been refused permission by the Tihar authorities to publish the book.

"This document is compiled after 200 hours conversation between me and Afzal Guru between March 2009 to December 2010," he said.

In one of the chapter, Diwvedi talks about Afzal's childhood and how he reached Pakistan.

"In my book I have mentioned all the reasons stated by Afzal for shifting to Pakistan and undergoing training as other terrorist did.

"He came back and realised that he was being used and decided to give up and lead a normal life.

"He had completed his first year in MBBS. He even tried for IES exam," says Diwvedi.

The book also gives the reasons why Guru, whose Brahmin family converted to Islam generations ago, returned to anti-national fold.

"One chapter is dedicated to Afzal Guru and how he carried out the planning for the attack. How they got the explosives and the RDX grenade the Chinese pistol and other things without being caught. How they arranged for their stay in Delhi, the recce done of the Parliament by people who were not Indian and did not understand any of the Indian language," Diwvedi said.