Alia Bhatt's mother and actress Soni Razdan kicked up a social media controversy after she tweeted on Afzal Guru's hanging. She wrote, "This is a travesty of justice. Who is going to bring back a man from the dead if he is innocent. This is why the death penalty is not to be used lightly. And this is why there also needs to be a solid enquiry into why Afzal Guru was made the scapegoat."
Afzal Guru, who was convicted in Parliament attack of 2001, was hanged on February 9, 2013. He was back in the news recently after the arrest of Jammu and Kashmir police officer Davinder Singh for his ties with militants. According to reports, in a letter to his lawyer, Afzal Guru had accused Davinder of being part of the controversy and also torturing him.
It is in the light of this news that Soni Razdan tweeted about justice and the death penalty. Her tweet however did not go down with Twitterati who slammed her for her stand and also went on to comment about 'anti-nationals' in Bollywood.
After the outrage started pouring in, Soni Razdan clarified in another tweet that she was not claiming Afzal Guru was innocent. She said: “No one is saying he is innocent. But if he was tortured and then ordered by his torturer to do what he did isn’t that what needed to be fully investigated ? Why did no one take his allegations about Devinder Singh seriously. That’s the travesty.”
In a letter to a Supreme Court lawyer in 2004, Guru mentions he met Davinder Singh at the Humhama STF camp when he was arrested in 1998-2000. Guru, a surrendered militant, claimed he had been arrested by police for not working with the STF. Guru had claimed Davinder had directed him to take one man, Mohammad, a co-accused in the Parliament attack case, to Delhi in 2001 and to purchase a car.
Davinder himself admitted to meeting Afzal Guru and even torturing him, but denied claims of sending him to Delhi. In an interview with journalist Parvaiz Bukhari in 2006, Davinder Singh, shockingly, gave details of how Guru was tortured.