In last letter to wife, Afzal named hanging code Operation Three Star

New Delhi, 11 Feb 2013 (IANS): Afzal Guru wrote his last letter to his wife a few hours before his execution code named Operation Three Star, Tihar Jail officials said Monday.

 

Speaking to IANS, officials at Tihar jail said that Afzal Guru, convicted for his role in the 2001 parliament attack, was told Feb 8 evening that he would be hanged the next morning under an operation code named Operation Three Star.

 

The preparation to hang Afzal Guru began immediately after the home ministry cleared the file Feb 4.

 

"When he was told about his execution, he was calm. He expressed his wish to write to his wife. The jail superintendent gave him a pen and paper," an official told IANS under the condition of anonymity.

 

"He wrote the letter in Urdu, which was posted to his family in Kashmir the same day," the official said.

 

When IANS contacted Afzal Guru’s family in Sopore, they said they are yet to receive the letter. "We have not received his letter. Maybe we will get it later, like the one about his hanging, which we got today," Yaseen Guru, Afzal’s cousin, told IANS on phone.

 

A hangman was called and arrangements were made to hang Afzal Guru near his solitary cell in of Tihar Jail Number 3.

 

"Very few officers were told about the decision. Three doctors and a maulvi, who performed his last rites, were informed secretly a night before. They were asked to come early Saturday morning," an official said

 

The motive for giving a secret code name to this operation was to prevent word of the impending hanging from getting around.

 

Afzal Guru performed his morning prayers and read a few pages of the Holy Quran. On the morning of his execution, he was calm and greeted officials, many whom he addressed by their first names.

 

He was buried near his cell. His family has demanded that they be allowed to conduct his last rites while officials said that the government would take a decision in this regard. Afzal Guru had been convicted of plotting the Dec 13, 2001, attack on parliament.