Afzal's son Ghalib told the President that his dream was to become a doctor and for that he needed his father around.
NEW DELHI: Afzal Guru, the man who faces capital punishment in the Parliament attack case, had a special petitioner who knocked on the President’s door to save his life. His seven-year-old son Ghalib accompanied Guru’s wife Tabassum to Rashtrapati Bhawan, requesting clemency for him.
Ghalib told the President that his dream was to become a doctor and for that he needed his father around. “I cannot fulfil my dream if you hang my father,” he reportedly told APJ Abdul Kalam in the 20-minute-long meeting.
A student of class I, Ghalib even tried to hang himself after his schoolmates informed him that his father faced capital punishment. Lawyer Nandita Haksar who accompanied the Guru family told DNA, “Ghalib knows that injustice is being done to him and his father. He wanted to hang himself to know what his father would have to go through if the death sentence were to be carried out.
Ghalib returned home from school, stood on a pile of pillows and put a rope around his neck.”
Haksar added that while many think capital punishment would be a deterrent, to Guru’s son it could be the end of a dream. “The boy is talking about becoming a doctor and not picking up the gun. But if his father is hanged, he may grow up with a feeling of vengeance.” Meanwhile, the justice department of the home ministry has already begun consultations with the Delhi government over the clemency petition submitted by Tabassum.
Rashtrapati Bhavan sources said the execution scheduled for October 20 would be postponed. “It is an automatic procedure. When a mercy petition is received by the president and subsequently forwarded to the home ministry, the government will have to put off the hanging,” said a senior Rashtrapati Bhavan official.
“Now, the ministry will examine the merits of the petition and accordingly advise the president on what should be the next course of action and whether Afzal’s petition should be considered sympathetically.”
Though there is no fixed time frame for taking a decision on the petition, the process in the home ministry normally takes two to three weeks, according to home ministry sources.
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