CHENNAI: The pitch of S Aslam’s voice rises slowly as he recalls the morning of May 21, 1991. To him, that is not the day a former Prime Minister of India was assassinated, but the day his mother, Samdani Begum, was killed in a bomb blast. Begum was the Mahila Congress president of South Chennai district.
At 16 years of age, that was also the day Aslam lost his second parent, in a gap of just two years. After that, life was hard for Aslam and his five siblings. But he still believes Perarivalan, Santhan and Murugan — the three convicted for their roles in the bombing — should not be hanged.
“I am a Tamilian living in Tamil Nadu. Is this not the appropriate sentiment to have?” he asks. “What they did was certainly wrong. But they have been in jail this long. I think that should be considered enough,” said the soft-mannered Aslam.
“Whether they are hanged or not, it is of no significance to me. Neither of those possibilities is going to bring my mother back and end my family’s sufferings,” he says, pointing out that he had to drop out of college to make a living for himself and his siblings by going to repair watches.
Aslam added that had the convicts not been Tamil, he would have nothing against their hanging. “But I don’t want to think about all that. This is my life now and I just want to carry on.” That’s why, he said, he had not lent his voice to either side in the recent controversy surrounding the death sentences. “If I go and speak for any side, the other side is going to take offence. I don’t want trouble. I am an ordinary man,” he says quietly.