State was fair to Yakub Memon: NSA

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval says ’93 blasts accused Yakub Memon was tried and due process of law was followed

National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, Ajit Doval has justified the hanging of 1993 blasts accused Yakub Memon, dismissing the charge that India sent the terror convict to the gallows for the crime of his brother Tiger.

NSA Ajit Doval. Pic/Suresh KK

The argument that India hanged Yakub because it could not get Tiger is wrong, he said. Doval was in the city to deliver the prestigious Lalit Doshi Memorial Lecture on Tuesday. When asked if India hanged Yakub because it could not get Tiger, Doval said, “It is completely wrong (the argument).

I do not agree with it at all. The fact is that India should take Tiger Memon to the logical judicial consequence. Yakub and Tiger are two standalone things... That is no logic or revenge (killing Yakub for Tiger’s crime). There were certain things against Mr X (Yakub). So he was tried and due process of law was followed. The inter linkage is not correct.”

Doval recollected his visit to the city last week, when he was told via a tweet by “an important person”, that the ‘state-sponsored killing’ had reduced the Indian state to a murderer. The NSA reminded the audience that the state has acted fair in the case of Memon. He quoted verses from the Bhagavad Gita that alluded to the larger dharma of national interest in a battlefield.

“The state acts in a judicial way and not for furtherance of any vested interests. Its actions are correct and citizens are not murderers, or it would not reduce them to the level of murderers. Confidence is to do what is right for the nation and there is no conflict,” he said. When asked if violence as a means to maintain statecraft was justified, Doval replied in the affirmative.

“Absolutely, yes. There is no confusion. But there are riders though, about the rightful processes, through a way which is in consonance with the nation’s law, constitution. It’s not that citizens approve the violence of the state in indiscriminate way. But definitely, should it come to protect the supreme interest of the nation, there is nothing that the nation should stop at. There will not be any compromise in that,” he said.

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