B Raman, an ace spymaster who was once head of the counter terrorism division of India's Research and Analysis wing (RAW), died a couple of years back, but Rediff.com has now posted an unpublished article from 2007, which he wrote after Yakub Memon was given life sentence by a trial court.
Raman had requested Rediff not to publish the story then, as he was in a great deal of moral dilemma about whether his disclosure would jeopardise the entire trial process. Now, Rediff has published the article taking permission from Raman's brother.
In the article, Raman says that Yakub Memon doesn't deserve to go to the gallows. Raman, who was heading the Pakistan desk of RAW at that time says that certain "mitigating circumstances in the case of Yakub Memon and some other members of the family were probably not brought to the notice of the court by the prosecution and that the prosecution did not suggest to the court that these circumstances should be taken into consideration while deciding on the punishment to be awarded to them".
So in a way, Raman said that the prosecution had held back on some crucial evidence to get the maximum sentence for Yakub Memon. According to Raman, Yakub was picked up by Nepal police from Kathmandu and then flown back to New Delhi in a RAW aircraft and finally formally arrested in the capital. Raman said that the entire operation was coordinated by him.
According to Raman, Yakub went to Nepal to consult a lawyer about going back to India with his family. The lawyer advised against it and Yakub was to return to Karachi. But he was nabbed and taken in custody by the Nepal police.
Here comes the most crucial part in Raman's article. He said that Yakub not only cooperated with the agencies after being informally caught, but also facilitated the return of some of his family members. They went from Karachi to Dubai and a senior officer of the IB coordinated the operation there.
Raman says that there is no iota of doubt about Yakub Memon's culpability in the 1993 Bombay blast case where 257 people were killed. But the way he cooperated with agencies after being nabbed probably warranted a less harsh judgement.
In all likelihood, Yakub Memon's fate has been sealed. But there will always be an alternate school of thought about him being sent to the gallows, and not necessarily from the 'sickular' or 'left wing'. A nationalist officer who orchestrated the entire operation also believed in the same thing. There lies the significance in B Raman's article.
