Let Advani hang me, Cong playing games: Afzal

THE DEATH PLEA: India's most controversial convict, Mohammed Afzal, wants a speedy conclusion to his ordeal.

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New Delhi: On death row for the last three years, India's most controversial convict, Mohammed Afzal, wants a speedy conclusion to his ordeal and says BJP's prime ministerial candidate LK Advani would act swiftly in deciding his plight one way or the other while the present government is dilly-dallying his death sentence.

"I don't think the UPA government can ever reach a decision. The Congress party has two mouths and is playing a double game," said Afzal, convicted for the December 2001 Parliament attack in an exclusive interview to IANS in Tihar prison's Jail No 3.

"I really wish LK Advani becomes India's next prime minister as he is the only one who can take a decision and hang me. At least my pain and daily suffering would ease then," said Afzal, who has been in solitary confinement in the capital's high security jail.

Incidentally, Advani has criticised the delay in carrying out the death sentence.

"I fail to understand the delay. They have increased my security. But what needs to be done immediately is to carry out the court's orders," Advani had remarked in November 2006.

In an exclusive interview, Afzal's first since he was convicted by the Supreme Court in 2004 that was subsequently upheld a year later, he says the death sentence had made him delusional. He, too, has filed a mercy petition – along with 40 others – that is pending before the President.

Cumbersome legal procedures and prolonged periods of solitary confinement, he said, were inhuman and cruel.

Psychologists call this condition the 'death row' phenomenon, in which prisoners spending years awaiting their execution go through excruciating mental torture, a fact that was recognised by the European Court of Human Rights in 1989.

"Life has become hell in the jail. I requested the Government to take an immediate decision over my sentence just two months ago. I don't wish to be part of the living dead," said Afzal, whose moods swung frequently between being stoic and defiant.

"I have also requested that till the time they (Government) take a decision, they shift me to a Kashmir jail," said Afzal.

Dressed in a spotless white kurta-pyjama and a sports cap to hide his shaven head, Afzal, who is in his mid-30s, said he sympathised with Sarabjit Singh, an Indian lodged in Pakistan prison for nearly two decades, but said no parallel could be drawn between the two of them.