A candlelight vigil at Jantar Mantar and fresh appeals to President Pranab Mukherjee to grant mercy to terror convict Yakub Abdul Razak Memon coincided on Wednesday with the apex court rejecting his petition to stay the execution.

Lawyers and activists had also assembled at the venue, requesting that they be granted an audience with the President so that they may put across their case on the fresh mercy petition that Memon had filed on Tuesday. The petition had also furnished correspondence between late RAW official B Raman and a journalist in which the former had called for leniency, citing Memon’s assistance to the investigating agencies.

Along with eminent artists, academics, lawyers, judges and politicians, former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Wednesday made an impassioned plea to the President to pardon Memon. Gandhi invoked former President APJ Abdul Kalam’s opposition to death penalty for a reconsideration of the rejection of Yakub Memon’s mercy plea.

“At this point in time, when the nation is paying solemn tribute to the former President whose conscientious opposition to death penalty is widely known, I urge you to reconsider the rejection of Yakub Memon’s mercy plea,” Gandhi said in his appeal to the President.

In Delhi, activists from different civil society organisations and political parties gathered at Jantar Mantar to issue a citizens’ appeal to the President. “Let us, as a nation, not regress to barbarianism and derive satisfaction from executing a convict,” said Manish Sethy of the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association.

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