New Delhi: Congress MP and former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor has a knack of finding himself in hot water time and again. Not one to feel shy over endorsing his views, Tharoor recently jumped right into the molten centre of the 1993 serial blasts convict Yakub Memon's execution as the country found itself weighing the decision of the Supreme Court.
In a series of tweets, he argued against the practice of death penalty in India. “There is no evidence that death penalty serves as a deterrent: To the contrary in fact. All it does is exact retribution: unworthy of a Govt,” he wrote.
“We must fight against terrorism w/all the means at our command. But cold-blooded execution has never prevented a terror attack anywhere,” he added.
With several people expressing conflicting opinion on whether Memon’s hanging had merit, Tharoor said that he was not commenting on one specific case. “That’s for the Supreme Court to decide. Problem is death penalty in principle & practice,” he wrote.
Sticking to his opinion on capital punishment, Tharoor seemed undeterred when BJP officials hit out at him calling his remarks an insult to those who wanted to get rid of terrorism. Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said he chose to ignore Tharoor’s tweets against the hanging, which the Congress MP dubbed as “state-sponsored killing”. He stuck to his opposition to death penalty even for terrorists, saying states should not act like “murderers” and that the criminal justice system left much room for errors and biases. “Terrorists should be put behind bars throughout their life without parole. In earlier days, there was a belief that if a person murders someone, he should be killed. Why do we need to follow the old obsolete practice…,”
“When we implement capital punishment, we are actually acting like them. They are the murderers and the state should not act like them,” Tharoor told reporters. On the bubbling reactions over his tweets, he said, “I have not said a word on Memon case. What I tweeted was that I was not going into the merits of an individual case and it was the responsibility of the Supreme Court. I had tweeted against the death penalty which is an obsolete practice.”
Even before the matter could cool down, Shashi Tharoor, upset over his party's allegations on him, wrote a scathing letter to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, accusing her of not appreciating his “sincerity”. “I was dismayed, indeed distressed, by our exchange at the morning meeting,” Tharoor said, referring to reports that the party president had taken Tharoor to task for supposedly leaking details of a meeting of Congress MPs. He expressed dismay at reports that stated he cut an “isolated figure” at the meeting and that “everybody disagreed with him” when he suggested the party should not stall Parliament.
“Yet, your comments this morning were based on the assumptions that I was responsible for the leaks! Why on earth would I have spoken to the media to undermine myself and my standing within the party?” Tharoor said.
“I hope there is no misunderstanding of either my conduct or my intentions. I have served the party's interests with sincerity and to the best of my ability, while often feeling that this has neither been seen nor appreciated. The events of the last 24 hours sadly suggest that this remained the case.”
In his letter, Tharoor also mentioned his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death and the “ghoulish attention” he received from the media in the wake of this “personal tragedy”. He added that since then he has kept his distance from the media.
“It is obvious that some people have managed to persuade you that I have been speaking to the press against the party's interests. Nothing could be farther from the truth... Leaking is the habit of conspirators and cowards; I am neither. Ever since my unwelcome unwelcome intrusion into their space, however, I have been targeted by both,” Tharoor said.
“Whether at a family gathering or at a meeting of a company, school or party, different kinds of contacts, interactions and exchanges take place... To take a small portion and leak it outside for someone’s personal interest, isn’t it indecent?” Tharoor asked.
He said he was not going to deny or confirm that he had sent a letter to Gandhi. “I am not confirming or denying this. If I confirm or deny this, it means it is legitimate to talk on such things. I am against such practices,” he said.
