How much biryani will India feed caught Pakistani 'terrorist'?
Never mind Mohammed Naved aka Usman's real name, age or other minor details. How many thousands of crores of rupees are going to be spent on keeping him alive and for how long? That's what the nation wants to know.
The nation's investigators and the media have decided he's a Pakistani "terrorist". There can be no two ways about it. Time was when Indian newspapers liberally sprinkled adjectives and clauses such as "alleged" "suspected" and "who is said to have". Such mealy mouthed niceties are now passe. Thankfully, there is in India at present a more robust journalistic culture consisting of eating out of investigators' hands.
Now this Naved aka Usman chap has to hang: The sooner, the better. And any lawyer assigned to defend the wretched young man better watch out. The Saket Bar Association crowned itself with glory following the December 16, 2012 rape case in New Delhi when it declared that its members would not defend the accused. The heck with the "cab-rank rule", the quaint convention which has it that lawyers are "bound to accept any briefs in the courts or tribunals" they propose to practice in.
In the Ajmal Kasab case, the lad had been getting way too much positive vibes via the media as the then special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam noted, deciding on a bit of "jumla", cooking up that biryani story which the Indian media helpfully and unquestioningly gorged on.
If Naved aka Usman hangs, he'll be the fourth Muslim in a row following Kasab, the Kashmiri Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon. Of course, India was almost about to hang the Dalit Surinder Koli over the "Nithari Killings" but the Allahabad High Court came in the way. He might yet hang as the commutation has been appealed. Incidentally, is Koli being fed biryani? That angle needs to be explored, without letting facts get in the way, and exploited via the media.
In the present case, the prosecutors should speedily get to the Supreme Court of India, which has shown in the Yakub Memon case that it is quite prepared to override its own strictures on due process. And the current occupant of Rashtrapati Bhavan has dispensed with the previous ones' practice of "applying the mind" over the Home Ministry's recommendations regarding rejections of mercy petitions. Mind, what mind?
The prosecutors should get made and release a short video with Naved aka Usman traipsing around the barracks of Yerawada Central Jail singing "Yeh biryani aur yeh naashta" (to the tune of "Yeh hariyali aur yeh rasta" from the 1962 Mala Sinha-Manoj Kumar starrer Hariyali Aur Rasta). The Pakistani seems sufficiently deranged to want to oblige.
That'll shut up the pseudo-secular, sickular, liberal human rights-wallahs, Naxalites and other pesky anti-death penalty types for good.