Senior Congress leader and former Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday strongly refuted Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s remarks in the Rajya Sabha, calling them a “lie and distortion” of facts regarding the delay in the execution of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.The Congress leader’s remarks came in response to Shah’s statement in the Rajya Sabha that the death sentence for Guru could not be carried out for as long as Chidambaram was the home minister.In a statement Chidambaram said, “Home Minister Amit Shah made a statement in the Rajya Sabha that ‘Afzal Guru could not be executed as long as P. Chidambaram was Home Minister’.The statement is a mixture of insinuation, lie, and distortion,” Chidambaram said.Clarifying the timeline, Chidambaram said that Guru’s wife had submitted a mercy petition to the President in October 2006. The petition was ultimately rejected on February 3, 2013, and Guru was hanged on February 9, 2013.“I was Home Minister from December 1, 2008, to July 31, 2012. During the entire period, the mercy petition was pending before the President,” he noted.Citing legal procedure, Chidambaram added, “The law is clear that a death sentence cannot be carried out until the mercy petition is decided.”
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