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India executes 1993 Mumbai bomber Yakub Memon by hanging

Memon was one of 11 people convicted in the bombings, but the only one that will be put to death.

By Ed Adamczyk and Doug G. Ware
Yabuk Memon awaits his execution in Nagpur, India. Photo courtesy of Public Domain/ farzana-versey.blogspot.in
Yabuk Memon awaits his execution in Nagpur, India. Photo courtesy of Public Domain/ farzana-versey.blogspot.in

NAGPUR , India, July 29 (UPI) -- The Indian government on Wednesday executed a man convicted in the bombings of the Mumbai stock exchange more than two decades ago -- an attack that left 257 people dead.

Yakub Memon, who turned 53 on the day of his hanging, had exhausted all remaining judicial appeals and was put to death early Thursday, authorities said.

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Memon was convicted in 2007 for helping raise funding for more than a dozen explosions that rocked downtown Mumbai in 1993 and led to street riots that left more than 900 people dead -- the majority of them Muslims.

The bombings were retaliation for the destruction by Hindu mobs of the 454-year-old Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, believed to be built atop an ancient Hindu temple. The demise of the mosque was a rare violent provocation by Hindu hardliners and led to riots across India.

Memon was hanged hours after the supreme court dismissed a final plea to stay the sentence, BBC News reported.

Memon was one of nearly a dozen people convicted in the bombings, but he's the only one who will be put to death. The other 10 convicts have had their death sentences commuted to life in prison.

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The death penalty is rarely invoked in Indian law, and while some see Memon's execution as deserved justice, others regard him as an exploited scapegoat of those seeking to fan ethnic and religious divisions in India. The situation has caused a deep divide in India's Hindu-Muslim relations.

India has executed just three people since 2004.

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