Rajya Sabha member and PDP leader Fayaz Ahmad Mir on Monday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking return of mortal remains of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, founder of the separatist J&K Liberation Front (JKLF). Both were buried at Tihar jail in Delhi, Mir wrote.
Mir wrote to the Prime Minister on the 35th death anniversary of Bhat, who was hanged in Tihar on February 11, 1984, for murder of a policeman. Guru was hanged on February 9, 2013.
Mir wrote: “We are well beyond the academic discussion on capital punishment, and whether Guru should have been sent to the gallows even though he was at number 28 of the list of death row prisoners, but his execution and the refusal to return his body by then incumbent government till date remains a sore misery and a dark blemish on the largest democracy. It was by all means an unconstitutional measure.”
Requesting the PM to “please consider” returning mortal remains of the two, he wrote, “How can bodies of two Kashmiri men, who lost their dignity in gallows, be a threat to a democracy like India? Is the collective conscience of India sans the collective conscience of Kashmiris?”
