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Yakub was calm after hearing SC verdict
Yakub Memon, one of the prime accused of Mumbai serial bomb blasts, was speechless after the apex court upheld his death penalty on Thursday.
Yakub Memon, one of the prime accused of Mumbai serial bomb blasts, was speechless after the Supreme Court upheld his death penalty on Thursday. Yakub is lodged at Nagpur central jail for the last few years.
According to local jail officials, when the verdict was conveyed to Memon, he did not react while the two other 1993 bomb blast accused, Abdul Gani Ismail Turk and Asgar Yusuf Mukadam expressed their gratitude when it was informed that their death penalty has been commuted to life imprisonment, officials said.
“We are grateful to Allah for the mercy,” said both the accused.
The jail authorities have shifted Gani and Asgar from the death row cell to other cell after the verdict while security has been tightened on Memon after the apex court upheld the death penalty.
Memon, who was convicted and awarded death for 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts which killed 257 people, had completed his post-graduate degree in English conducted by the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), recently.
A professional chartered accountant and brother of Ibrahim Mushtaq (Tiger) Memon, one of the prime accused of the Mumbai blast, Yakub used to handle the finances of Tiger’s illegal operations.
He was shifted to Nagpur central jail in August, 2007, from Yerwada jail in Pune. The transfer was made on administrative grounds to ease the overcrowding at Yerawada jail.
Yakub was the most educated member of the Memon family and has been in jail since he returned to India and surrendered in 1994. Local jail authorities informed that he is a voracious reader and enrolled for MA in English as soon as he was put in Nagpur central jail.
The jail superintendent of Nagpur central jail, Vinod Shekdar, informed that after successfully clearing MA in English examination, Yakub had enrolled his name for another post graduation degree in Political Science from IGNOU.
“He is a very soft-spoken person and uses our jail library to take books regularly,” says Shekdar.
