Seven years ago, when Kash­miri na­tional Afzal Guru was sur­rep­ti­tiously hanged in the closed en­vi­rons of the Ti­har prison in Delhi, he was calm, cool, col­lected and God-fear­ing while the jailer who saw through his hang­ing -Sunil Gupta, ‘broke down and cried’ when he reached his home. Po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist and a close Kash­mir watch­dog Kan­war Pal Singh re­vis­its the hang­ing through the eyes of Sunil Gup­ta’s book -Black War­rant.

“ON 9 FEB­RU­ARY 2013, AT 6 AM, IT WAS TIME TO TELL AFZAL GURU OF HIS IM­MI­NENT DEATH. We had seen each other around but there had been no con­ver­sa­tion be­tween us. I would see him read­ing books of dif­fer­ent faiths- Gita, Quran and the Vedas. When he was­n’t read­ing, he was usu­ally do­ing his prayers- un­fail­ingly five times a day.”

“With re­gret, I have to tell you that to­day is your hang­ing, the Su­per­in­ten­dent in­formed Afzal. I know, I fig­ured, an­swered Afzal.”

The de­tails of the fi­nal hours of Afzal Guru as re­vealed by Sunil Gupta in Black War­rant, will make every Kash­miri proud. His com­po­sure in the face of death spoke of his be­lief in Al­lah and his ways as well as his com­mit­ment to the cause of Kash­miri na­tion­al­ism.

Sunil Gupta, who re­tired as a law of­fi­cer of Ti­har Jail in 2016, has penned un­heard sto­ries of the prison in his book “Black War­rant”, with award-win­ning jour­nal­ist Sune­tra Choudhry. He has com­piled his ex­pe­ri­ence at Ti­har jail over a pe­riod span­ning 35 years in what is con­sid­ered as one of the most se­cure pris­ons of Asia.

“Apne liye jiye to kya jiye, tu ji ae dil za­mane ke liye.” -“What is a life worth, if it is lived only for one­self; it is a life worth liv­ing when lived for oth­ers.” 

Afzal Guru sang this song prior to his hang­ing

“We all sat down with him and asked him if he wanted tea. As we sipped it slowly, Afzal spoke calmly about his case. And then he started singing from the 1960’s movie Badal, “Apne liye jiye to kya jiye, tu ji ae dil za­mane ke liye.” -What is a life worth, if it is lived only for one­self; it is a life worth liv­ing when lived for oth­ers.”

“There was no fear in his voice. There was just some­thing about the way Afzal sang it, that I could not help my­self. I sang along with him un­til he stopped and asked for some more tea. The man, who served tea in the prison had left and Afzal Guru, con­victed in the 2001 Par­lia­ment at­tack, went to the gal­lows with­out his last wish ful­filled -a cup of tea.”

When the Jail Su­per­in­ten­dent asked Afzal if he wanted to give any mes­sage to those he was leav­ing be­hind, Afzal wanted to know if you will be there at the time of hang­ing. When the Jail Su­per­in­ten­dent said, don’t worry, Afzal told him “make sure I am not in pain.”

Be­fore he was hanged, Afzal wrote a let­ter to his fam­ily say­ing, Asalam u alikum -Peace be upon you. I thank Almighty that he has cho­sen me for this stature. From my side, I want to con­grat­u­late all the be­liev­ers. We all should stay with truth and right­eous­ness and our end must also come on the path of truth and right­eous­ness. My re­quest to my fam­ily is that in­stead of griev­ing over my end, they should re­spect the stature I have achieved. Almighty God is your great­est pro­tec­tor. I leave you in Al­lah’s pro­tec­tion.

Afza­l’s hand­writ­ten let­ter reached his fam­ily 26 hours af­ter his hang­ing.

If you have a heart which has not been hard­ened by the In­dian state then read the re­ac­tion of Sunil Gupta when he reached his quar­ters in the Ti­har prison.

“Af­ter duty hours on reach­ing home, I threw out a rule I had al­ways fol­lowed. I told my fam­ily about Afza­l’s fi­nal hours, they all cried to­gether.”

Gupta wrote that it was the first time that he broke down and cried. Af­ter that Gupta ad­mits that he heard that song on YouTube “Apne liye jiye to kya jiye, tu ji ae dil za­mane ke liye,” end­lessly.

The jailer knew that any­one who re­ferred to Afzal, called him anti-na­tional but ac­cord­ing to the au­thor who has dared to share his thoughts in the cur­rent cli­mate of fear, “Afzal was a good man who wanted to serve hu­man­ity and for his peo­ple to live peace­fully.”

I will not hes­i­tate to add that while read­ing the graphic ac­count, tears rolled down my cheeks imag­in­ing the last hours of Afzal Guru and the last re­ac­tion of Sunil Gupta and his fam­ily.

“Afzal was a good man who wanted to serve hu­man­ity and for his peo­ple to live peace­fully.”

Sunil Gupta, au­thor of Black War­rant

Black War­rant au­thor Gupta is of the un­mis­tak­able view that every as­pect of Afzal Gu­ru’s case was con­tro­ver­sial. Every­one else ar­rested in the In­dian Par­lia­ment at­tack case were ac­quit­ted, but he was not. The Supreme Court ad­mit­ted that Afzal was not part of any ter­ror group. The case against Afzal was a ter­ror charge un­der POTA which needed clear­ance from the Cen­tre but in this case, it was given by the Delhi gov­ern­ment.

Can you be­lieve it, Afzal did not have a lawyer rep­re­sent­ing his case? At a later stage, vet­eran ju­rist Ram Jeth­malani got in­volved and pointed out var­i­ous loop­holes in the po­lice case and ob­jected to award­ing death penalty sim­ply on the ba­sis of a con­fes­sion un­der POTA. While dis­miss­ing the re­view plea, the Supreme Court in its ob­ser­va­tions went be­yond the scope of rule of law and un­abashedly said, “the col­lec­tive con­science of the so­ci­ety will only be sat­is­fied if the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is awarded to the of­fender.”

Even Afzal in a let­ter to his lawyer pointed a fin­ger to­wards the no­to­ri­ous cop DSP Davin­der Singh for forc­ing him to help Par­lia­ment at­tacker Mo­ham­mad. But all his cries and con­fes­sions fell on deaf ears. The re­cent ar­rest of Davin­der Singh while ac­com­pa­ny­ing Kash­miri mil­i­tants has vin­di­cated Afza­l’s rev­e­la­tions, but cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment makes it im­pos­si­ble for re­ver­sal of a wrong judg­ment based on a wrong premise. How­ever, it can be said that if the Supreme Court had ac­cepted the ev­i­dence in the let­ter, the judge­ment in the case would have been dif­fer­ent with full chances of ac­quit­tal of Afzal Guru and un­earthing of the real facts.

The rev­e­la­tions made by Gupta as to how the rules were cir­cum­vented to pre­vent a last per­sonal in­ter­ac­tion with his fam­ily are shock­ing and be­wil­der­ing. Of course, if you are anti-Kash­miri, it is fine.

Gupta says that rules re­lated to hang­ing are very clear -be­tween the time that Pres­i­dent Pranab Mukher­jee dis­missed the mercy pe­ti­tion and the date of the hang­ing, the prison au­thor­i­ties did not have the usual two weeks, but only six days. How­ever, six days was def­i­nitely enough time to in­form Afza­l’s fam­ily and to al­low for the last meet­ing, which was not done.

Gupta wrote that on Feb­ru­ary 6, three days prior to the hang­ing, af­ter the Pres­i­dent sealed his fate, a let­ter was sent by speed post by the Su­per­in­ten­dent of Jail num­ber 3 ad­dressed to Afza­l’s wife Tabas­sum. By the time, the let­ter reached Tabas­sum, it was too late- there was no ac­tion pos­si­ble for the fam­ily.

This hang­ing was shrouded in se­crecy. It was an ex­tra­ju­di­cial mur­der in which the Pres­i­dent of In­dia, the ex­ec­u­tive and the ju­di­ciary were com­plicit and they are an­swer­able to Afzal Gu­ru’s fam­ily, the Kash­miri peo­ple and to so­ci­ety at large.

The fact that his fam­ily was not al­lowed to see him be­fore he was ex­e­cuted is the biggest tragedy. I say that the en­tire Ti­har ad­min­is­tra­tion should be held ac­count­able for not fa­cil­i­tat­ing the last meet­ing with the fam­ily. The de­ci­sion to hang him was con­veyed to Afzal only an hour be­fore his ex­e­cu­tion. Once the black war­rant is signed, then it is clearly the re­spon­si­bil­ity of the prison au­thor­i­ties to fol­low the rule book, which clearly, they did not.

This hang­ing was shrouded in se­crecy. It was an ex­tra­ju­di­cial mur­der in which the Pres­i­dent of In­dia, the ex­ec­u­tive and the ju­di­ciary were com­plicit and they are an­swer­able to Afzal Gu­ru’s fam­ily, the Kash­miri peo­ple and to so­ci­ety at large.

Afzal Gu­ru’s ac­count in Black War­rant is one of the nine ac­counts in the book de­tail­ing the last hours, in­clud­ing Maq­bool Butt, hanged in the case of the killing of an In­dian en­voy Ravin­dra Ma­ha­tre and Sat­want Singh and Ke­har Singh in the In­dira Gandhi case.

It would be in­ter­est­ing to know of the spirit of Afzal Guru from his jail friend Davin­der Pal Singh Bhullar.

Afzal Guru lies peace­fully with Kash­miri mil­i­tant Maq­bool Butt buried in Ti­har prison.

Gupta men­tions that Afzal be­friended Khal­is­tani sup­porter and then on the death-row Davin­der Pal Singh Bhullar at Ti­har and both shared a great re­la­tion­ship, spend­ing the lit­tle time they got dur­ing their daily walks. It would be in­ter­est­ing to wait for Davin­der Pal Singh Bhullar’s ac­count of his days with Afzal Guru.

WSN will share an ac­count of the last hours of Kash­miri na­tion­al­ist Maq­bool Butt on his death an­niver­sary on 11 Feb­ru­ary.