Afzal Guru: Rahul says even Rajiv case hanging

In an interaction with HN Bahuguna University students here on Tuesday, when Rahul was asked about the reason for the delay in Afzal Guru case, he cited his own case saying he was 14 years old when his grandmother late Indira Gandhi was killed with 32 bullets. There were 150 witnesses. Two persons were hanged but the case took seven years.

In Rajiv’s assassination case, 40 people were involved. It has been 17 years but “nobody has been punished”. “The issue is not that Afzal Guru has not been hanged; the issue is that our legal system works very slowly. My father was the Prime Minister. My grandmother was the Prime Minister. I was a son, a grandson. I have not got justice. But I believe in our justice system; you do get justice in India,” said Rahul.

“I do what my father used to do. Times are different now, so issues are also different. My father talked of computer. It is already there today. We are talking about nuclear energy, education. Our thinking is the same — how to take the youth along,” said the AICC general secretary.

Unlike his father who was forced by circumstances to enter politics, Rahul suggested that he never had any other career in mind. Asked if he would still be in politics if his father were alive, Rahul remembered how he saw his father working tirelessly for people. “I would ask him ‘Papa, why are you doing it, why are you mingling with the crowd?’ But he did not stop. As long as he was in politics, he worked for you (youth).”

The Amethi MP reminisced how Rajiv was attacked by people, who are “big leaders in the opposition” now, when his father talked about computer. “I saw how his entire efforts were sought to be negated. It had a deep influence on me. Were my father alive, I wouldn’t have taken some other path,” he said.