Early Times Report
Jammu, Oct 6: The administration in Baramulla district on Tuesday demolished an illegally built shed on government land in Sopore, a town that is also the home ground of one of the most controversial convicts in India’s recent history.
The structure had been built and used by relatives of Mohammad Afzal Guru, the man hanged in 2013 for his role in the 2001 attack on Parliament.
A team of the Revenue Department carried out the action. Officials said the shed stood on flood-zone land and had been raised on state property in violation of government rules. The team razed the unauthorised structure during the operation. Officials described the move as part of the administration’s continuing action against illegal occupation of, and construction on, government land.
For those who followed the case, the name needs little introduction. Afzal Guru was a native of Sopore. By his own account he was once part of the militancy in the Valley, and he later surrendered and tried to rebuild his life, a past that the case against him would eventually place under intense scrutiny. He was living in Delhi when the capital was shaken by one of the most brazen terror attacks on the Indian state.
On December 13, 2001, five heavily armed terrorists drove into the Parliament complex in New Delhi, firing and throwing grenades. Security personnel and Parliament staff fought them at the gates and killed all five attackers, but nine people lost their lives that day, among them security personnel and a gardener. The attack brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a military confrontation.
Guru was arrested within days and convicted, and he was sentenced to death by a special court in 2002. The sentence was upheld by the Delhi High Court and then the Supreme Court in 2005, which in its verdict spoke of the “collective conscience of society” in confirming the punishment.
His review petition was dismissed, and his mercy petition was finally rejected by the President in February 2013. Guru was hanged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in the same month and buried within the jail premises. His execution drew strong reactions across the country and especially in Kashmir, and the debate over the trial and the sentence has not fully died down.
Tuesday’s demolition in Sopore, however, was framed by officials strictly as an action against encroachment on state land. The administration’s stand is that the law applies equally to everyone who occupies government land, whatever their family connections. |