National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Tuesday refuted claims that 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon was executed because India could not catch his brother, Tiger Memon.
According to an ABPLive report, Doval vehemently denied the assumption, saying,
It’s wrong to assume so. I do not agree with it at all. It’s like slapping my grandchildren when you cannot slap me.
Mr Doval, who was delivering a lecture at Mumbai’s Yashvantrao Chavan Centre, also went on to say,
There is no revenge. He (Yakub) was tried through the due process of law. Yakub and Tiger are standalone. Inter linkage is incorrect.
Slamming Tharoor, Defending the Death Penalty
The death penalty had last week spanned a whole host of reactions – some in support of the execution, while several had expressed vehement opposition. A large cross-section of society had in fact petitioned for a commuting of Memon’s death sentence.
Doval, however, defended the death penalty, claiming that here the “larger interest of the nation” was involved. Without naming former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor though, Doval made it clear that the latter’s remarks were not appreciated.
In the evening last Thursday (the day Yakub Memon was hanged), somebody tweeted me a statement by an important leader that – state sponsored killings diminish us all, reduce us to murderers. I am not going into the propriety, exigency or the correctness of the statement. There is something which is in public interest, in the larger interests of the nation and of generations of Indians yet to take birth.
This is what Tharoor had tweeted after Memon’s hanging:
Doval also referred to President George W Bush’s address to the US Congress after the 9/11 attacks to defend the exercise of such deterrence.
After the 9/11 attacks, then US President George W Bush had told the US Congress, that America values its freedom, but should it come in conflict with interests of the state, the latter will prevail.
– Ajit Doval
Striking an aggressive note, Doval went on to declare that the “weakness” of a nation includes “unjustified tolerance”.
Quoting Scripture in the Context of Memon’s Execution
Noting that there has always been a talk on just laws and unjust laws and about correct interventions and incorrect interventions, the NSA said, “The scriptures have addressed this dilemma and come to own conclusions.”
The Bhagvad Gita says, if you can bring pleasure and pain on the same pedestal, loss and profit and victory and defeat on the same pedestal, and thereafter you do whatever you have to do in the battle, you will be committing no sin
– Ajit Doval
Doval also quoted a verse from the Quran to explain his point of view.
(With inputs from PTI)
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