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You are just one step away from being a crorepati. Your question: How many terror convicts are on death row in India?

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You are just one step away from being a crorepati. Your question: How many terror convicts are on death row in India? Last week, we carried a story on how terror convicts are growing fat on the country's hard-earned ration, and surviving on taxpayers' expenses in jails across the country, while we are sitting on their appeals and mercy petitions.

We tried to reach every source possible governmental and non-governmental and yet could not find the

innumerable towers of terror who're breathing free all over India. All that we came up with, was an approximate number given out on a web portal on terrorism being run by a former security expert.

For statistics' sake, 28 petitions are pending with the President and at least five of them are terrorists', including that of Afzal Guru, the Parliament attack convict. The Supreme Court gave Guru a death sentence, which was to be carried out by October 21, 2006.

However, three years later, Guru is alive and kicking at the Delhi's Tihar Jail. It is claimed that the President takes up the mercy petitions for consideration in the order they come, but wasn't it enough that we had given terrorists all the chance in the world to save their skin by maneuvering the legal system? Why can't the President take up their petitions on priority? Doesn't the oft-repeated charge of India being spineless against terrorism hurt enough?

We catch a terrorist, produce him in court, and then the case goes on, till another one plans and executes an attack somewhere else. A case in point would be Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad. The terrorist was in a jail in Kashmir when members of his outfit hijacked a plane to rescue him. It cannot be denied that during his stay in jail, he was planning and giving orders for terrorist strikes across the country, going by the porous security in our prisons.

Therefore, a terror convict in jail is equally dangerous, if not more, than what he is when free. I agree, special fast track courts have made the trial of such criminals quick and precise, but what's the point in doing so much to bring them to book if the sentence can't be executed?

India has been a victim of terror long enough to have learnt its lessons. We may have acquired the power to retaliate, but are yet to learn how to defend and secure. As far as mercy petitions are concerned, I feel it is the people of this country who need some mercy from their political masters, if not a crore to answer the question!

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