Kobad Ghandy on Tihar: ‘Jailers Wept for Afzal Guru; Nirbhaya Rapist Vinay Sharma Was a Vile Sort‘

One of India’s most high profile 'Naxal' prisoners has given a first-hand account of how Afzal Guru walked to the gallows and met his death by hanging in Tihar jail in 2013. Kobad Ghandy, who was accused of being a politburo member of the CPI (Maoists) i.e. the Naxalites, which he denies, and spent 10 years in six different jails including seven in Delhi’s Tihar jail, says that at 8.00 a.m. on 9th of February 2013, the day Afzal Guru was hanged, the jail staff lined-up along the two-minute route as Guru walked from the high risk ward to the phansi kothi where the gallows had been prepared. He said Guru covered the distance with great courage and did not break down at the moment of hanging. Kobad Ghandy says Guru asked the jail officers to look after the jail staff who had been good to him. More importantly, Ghandy adds, the jail staff were in tears. He said this was told to him by the jail staff themselves.

In a 50-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, to mark the launch of his book ‘Fractured Freedom: A Prison Memoir’, Ghandy spoke about some of the more interesting and notorious people whom he shared a cell with in jail, including Vinay Sharma, one of the Nirbhaya rapists, Om Prakash Chautala, the former Chief Minister of Haryana, and the notorious gangster Chhota Rajan.

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