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| Celebrities Protest Indian Death Sentence |
| Arundhati Roy, Medha Patakar and Sandeep Pandey join protest in India |
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Vishal Bharti (vishal)  |
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Published 2006-10-09 12:40 (KST) |
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Last week, after the Indian Supreme Court ruled that Mohammad Afzal be hanged on Oct. 20 for his role in the 2001 Parliament attack, the campaign for clemency gained momentum as a number of celebrities from all over India joined the protest against capital punishment.
In a protest organized by the Society for the Protection of Detainees and Prisoners Rights, a number of prominent political leaders, social activists, writers, academicians and students from 17 states staged a sit-in demonstration in Delhi on Wednesday. They demanded that Afzal's death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment.
Flaying capital punishment, Booker Prize winner writer and social activist Arundhati Roy said, "The Parliament attack case is full of fabricated stories and evidence, and to hang someone who would not have been guilty would not be justice.
Addressing the gathering Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patakar said Afzal's death sentence represented "terrorism by the establishment."
Megasay Award winner and environmental activist Sandeep Pandey and SAR Geelani were also present at the protest.
It is significant to mention here that Geelani, a lecturer at the prestigious Delhi University, was also wrongly implicated in the same Parliament attack case. In its verdict, the Delhi Session Court awarded him the death sentence but later the Supreme Court acquitted him. Initially, when Geelani was implicated, prominent people came to his defense. Even professor of linguistics and social activist Noam Chomsky openly stood by him.
Celebrated film actors Rahul Bose and Nandita Das also attended a separate conference to oppose Afzal's hanging.
"I am against capital punishment as a way of curbing crime," Rahul Bose said, addressing the people.
Kashmir valley was also rocked by massive protests after the Supreme Court announced the date of the hanging. Most of the political parties of Indian Kashmir were united in a demand of mercy for Afzal. Even Chief Minister Gulam Nabi Azad personally appealed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for clemency.
Earlier on Tuesday, family members, including Afzal's mother, wife and son, submitted a mercy petition to President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
In an open letter to the president and prime minister -- published in a national English daily on Oct. 2 -- celebrated documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan and democratic rights activist Jagmohan Singh said, "A civil society should not descend to the status of murderers by preferring revenge over far better forms of justice."
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©2006 OhmyNews
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