Indian policemen stand guard near the house of Yakub Abdul Razak Memon in Mumbai. Memon was executed for his part in 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people. Rafiq Maqbool / AP Photo
Indian policemen stand guard near the house of Yakub Abdul Razak Memon in Mumbai. Memon was executed for his part in 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people. Rafiq Maqbool / AP Photo

India executes Yakub Memon for his part in 1993 Mumbai bombings



NEW DELHI // Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, the only death row convict in India’s deadliest terror attack, the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people, was hanged early Thursday after the country’s president rejected a last-minute mercy plea.

Memon, 53, was executed inside a prison in western India where he had been incarcerated since 1994.

An accountant, Memon was convicted in 2007 of helping raise funds for the serial blasts that rocked the financial capital. By late Wednesday Memon finally exhausted all the legal avenues open to him to escape the death penalty.

Yakub’s older brother Ibrahim, or “Tiger,” Memon and Dawood Ibrahim, both leading gangsters in Mumbai in the 1990s, are the main suspects in the bombings, seen as revenge for the destruction of a 16th century mosque by Hindu nationalists. Both have fled the country.

Prominent citizens, including retired Supreme Court judges and actor Shah Rukh Khan, had urged President Pranab Mukerjee to commute Memon’s sentence to life in prison.

That appeal reflected both opposition to the death penalty as well as fresh claims by his lawyers that he freely surrendered to Indian authorities in Kathmandu, Nepal, and that his direct links to the bombings had not been sufficiently established.

Indian investigators, along with the main public prosecutor in the case, Ujjwal Nikam, say he was arrested in New Delhi.

The hanging, carried out on Memon’s birthday, came after a day of dramatic last-ditch efforts by his legal team to commute or at least delay his sentence. Just two hours before the sentence was carried out India’s Supreme Court had been hearing arguments by his lawyers.

“I have exhausted my remedies,” lawyer Anand Grover told reporters in New Delhi at dawn after the Supreme Court heard Memon’s final plea. “I only hope that Yakub Memon will have a dignified death.”

“There’s no question of victory. I’ve just done my job,” said Attorney-General Mukul Rohtagi.

The March 12, 1993, bombings ripped through the country’s financial heart, and targeted some of the city’s key centres — the Bombay Stock Exchange, Air India offices, a state transport office, three hotels, a gas station and a movie theatre.

The bombs, packed into cars, scooters, under a manhole cover and in a hotel room, were detonated over two hours in the afternoon.

The blasts were seen as revenge for the demolition of a medieval mosque in northern India by Hindu nationalists. The mosque’s demolition sparked religious riots in many parts of the country, leaving more than 800 people dead, most of them Muslims.

It was one of India’s lengthiest court trials, with 686 witnesses giving testimony that filled 13,000 pages. The trial began June 6, 1995, and hearings ended in January 2003. The judgments finally began to come in late 2006.

The accused included gangsters, housewives and a Bollywood movie star. A total of 100 people have been convicted of involvement in the blasts. Ten of those were also sentenced to death but had their death sentences commuted to life in prison.

As Mumbai woke up to the news of the hanging, scores of police gathered near the Memon family home and cordoned off the area. His wife and daughter were believed to be at the family home.

Police were also stationed at the various places in the city where the bombs had exploded.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have decried the hanging.

India’s legal system allows for executions in what the Supreme Court calls “the rarest of the rare cases.” But there are debates on how to define that and the only executions in recent years have been of convicted terrorists. The vast majority of the 100-150 death sentences handed down each year are eventually commuted to life in prison.

For nearly a decade, India had an unofficial moratorium on executions. That ended in November 2012 with the execution of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Two months later, Mohammad Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri convicted in a deadly 2001 attack on India’s Parliament complex, was hanged. Both executions were done secretly and the bodies were buried inside prison compounds.

* Associated Press

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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

Nepotism is the name of the game

Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad. 

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