The Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies on Tuesday said it will present 13,748 signed petitions against the death penalty given to the mastermind of the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, Mohammad Afzal Guru, to the United Nations special rapporteur.
As many as 13,748 people signed the petitions in a week, chairman of the society Pervez Imroze said on Tuesday, which is also observed as the World Day Against Death Penalty.
Imroze said the signed petitions will be presented to the UN special rapporteur on extra judicial, summary and arbitrary executions.
The petitions will also be sent to different international human rights organisations like Amnesty International, he said.
He said the basic objective of the signature campaign was to register their protest against the failure of the Indian legal system.
The UN special rapporteur has already committed that the defendants in the proceedings leading to imposition of death penalty must benefit from the services of a lawyer at every stage of proceedings, he said. "We believe that Afzal's death penalty is within this mandate because he got an unfair trial," Imroze said.
