The life and death of a surrendered militant

What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? – Albert Camus

In an operation cloaked in complete secrecy, Mohammed Afzal Guru, 43, was hanged on the morning of Saturday, 9 February 2013, at Tihar jail in Delhi. The operation was code named 'Operation 3 Star' as Afzal was lodged in Jail Number 3 of the prison. With Kafkaesque irony, officials conducted a medical examination at 3 am that same day, with the doctor pronouncing Afzal to be healthy, with normal blood pressure, and presumably fit to be killed – a requirement for cold-blooded execution by judicial and executive diktat. It appears that executing a sick person would not fulfil the Supreme Court's 2005 judgment: "the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender". The use of the word 'award' to order the death of a person seems strange, but is in tune with the notion of playing god, exercising the power of life and death over a fellow human being.

Delay and speed
After keeping the threat of death hanging over Afzal for more than seven years, the executive moved with lightning speed this month – the President rejected the petition for mercy on 3 February, the Home Minister gave his approval on 4 February, and Afzal was executed on 9 February. Almost exactly 29 years earlier, on 11 February 1984, Maqbool Bhat, the co-founder of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was hanged in the same jail. Bhat became an icon for the cause of Kashmiri independence, and there is still a shutdown in Kashmir Valley every year on 11 February to commemorate his death. Hanging Afzal Guru on 9 February, while possibly an oversight by an executive not in tune with Kashmiri sensibilities, brings home the correlation between this execution and the struggle in Kashmir. The executive rushed the execution – ignoring legal prescriptions for informing the family and allowing appeal against the rejection of a petition for mercy – not for fear of 'enemies of the nation' mounting a rescue of the convicted 'terrorist' but, more dangerously, for fear of  intervention by the courts. For the Union Government – entrusted to uphold the rule of law – to subvert the Constitution, which allows judicial intervention after rejection of a clemency plea, speaks volumes about the state of governance in India.