Thiruvananthapuram: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has explained that he had advocated the abolition of capital punishment and was not particularly talking about the case of 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon.
Mr Tharoor told reporters here on the sidelines of a function at the Government Central School, Attakulangara, on Sunday that he opposed the death penalty even for terrorists as it was an 'obsolete practice'.
They should instead be put behind bars for the rest of their lives without parole. While reacting to the recent controversy over his tweet on the execution of Memon, he said, “I have not uttered a single word on the 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”.
He said he was not alone, but several other leaders, including Sitaram Yechury, D. Raja, Kanimozhi, Shatrughan Sinha and Varun Gandhi, had also supported the abolition of the death penalty.
“As many as 143 countries have abandoned the practice while another 25 countries are not practicing it even though there are provisions for it in their law,” he said.
Mr Tharoor while reacting to the pastoral letter read out in churches under Thiruvananthapuram Latin Archdiocese during the holy mass on Sunday flaying the state government for not announcing a rehabilitation package for fishing community who would suffer losses due to the Vizhinjam port project, he said that the anxieties of the people should be addressed.
“As far as I know, a rehabilitation package is part of the project,” he added.
