L’Affaire Yakub Memon

To hang Memon while real perpetrators remain free from the grip of authorities will be an acute miscarriage of justice

Salman Khan’s tweets saying that Yakub Memon should not be hanged sparked a political furore. Within minutes, an otherwise outspoken Salman was forced to retract his tweets to avoid getting sucked into a new maze of controversies. This is among the perils of being Salman Khan, who has a trail of criminal cases dogging him. He is more prone to risk, political Machiavellianism and criticism, than a group of luminaries who have endorsed a mercy petition to the Indian president to give reprieve to Memon. It is unfortunate that in a democracy, a high-profile celebrity like Salman is rarely allowed to express his views on social media, yet everyone has an opinion on his movies and off-screen life.

As the 300 crore Bajrangi Bhaijaan saw protests outside his home, TV channels in no time sent their OB vans to shamelessly rinse this new-found scoop in prime time. #SalmanwithTerrorist was trending on Twitter. I can understand what Salman went through, considering that with barely a zillionth of his followers, I received a fistful of unreasoned abuses from compulsive trolls for airing a similar viewpoint. This stance might seem insensitive to those who were directly affected by the Mumbai blasts, but the fact is that Memon, unlike his kin, actually surrendered to plead his innocence and tell all to the police and prosecutors. No one is exonerating him from blame, but if the larger Supreme Court bench eventually concurs with the original verdict of sending him to the gallows, he will be paying a heavy price for being the blood brother of the mastermind behind the heinous crime. Memon has already served more than two decades in prison and I feel he should remain incarcerated for life, but it should be noted that he is an accessory before the fact. He is not the fact itself. To hang him while the real perpetrators remain free from the grip of our authorities will be an acute miscarriage of justice. If the decision on his hanging is reversed, it will no doubt spark ferocious outrage from a certain section, but it will also put an end to the scapegoat culture and encourage more Yakubs to surrender and repose faith in the Indian legal system.

On a separate note, it is ironic that the perpetrators of the Babri Masjid massacre have still not been dealt with. And never will. 

Tailpieces

1) Not sure where Whoopi Goldberg’s going with her defence of disgraced sitcom star, Bill Cosby, even though he said in deposition that drugs and fame helped him seduce women. Does the fact that he is black have something to do with it? I hope not.

2) Madonna says she wants history to remember her not as a pop star but as an artist to rank alongside the likes of Picasso. Given how freakish she’s looking these days, she easily resembles some of Picasso’s masterpieces.

3) Fawad Khan was adjudged ‘Most Beautiful Man’ by Vogue India. This is among the myriad of awards conferred on Fawad for his personality and good looks. I’m sure even he’s itching to move to the real game now — the box office awards.

4) Those who threatened Fakhr-e-Alam, the chairman of the Sindh Censor Board, for clearing the supposedly anti-national Bajrangi Bhaijaan have hopefully come to terms with the fact that the awaam has made the movie the biggest Eid blockbuster in Pakistan.

5) To the patriarchal hypocrites chastising Reham Khan for her supposedly wild past summarised by videos in which she is wearing mini-skirts and dancing at festivals: every saint has a past and every sinner has a future!

Published in The Express Tribune, July 30^th, 2015.

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