Justice Dipak Misra led the Supreme Court bench that decided on Yakub Memon's plea
A death threat has been made in writing to one of the three judges who refused to stop the hanging of 1993 blasts convict Yakub Memon.
An anonymous letter addressed to Justice Dipak Misra was found by security guards in the backyard of his home in Delhi; the police say it was thrown over the wall, which is not guarded by CCTV cameras or security personnel.
The short note allegedly says in Hindi: "irrespective of the protection you may avail, we will eliminate you."
The Chief Justice of India, HL Dattu, said the Supreme Court had taken measures to deal with such threats. "Our job is to decide the cases and we do it without fear. We do our job and leave the rest," said the top judge.
Soon after Yakub Memon was hanged in the early hours of July 30, security for Justice Misra and his two colleagues was increased, based on concerns and a threat perception.
Hours before the execution, Justices Misra, Amitav Roy and Prafulla Pant met at around 3 am to discuss Yakub Memon's eleventh-hour petition to stop his hanging. At around 5 am, the judges decided that stopping Memon's hanging would be "a travesty of justice."
Memon was convicted in 2007 as the "driving spirit" of the deadly attack in Mumbai in 1993 in which 257 people were killed as bombs exploded back to back in landmarks across the city including the Stock Exchange. In 2013, the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. A mercy petition filed by his brother on his behalf was turned down by President Pranab Mukherjee.
In the last three days before he was executed, Memon's lawyers, helped by activists, explored several ways to stop his hanging. They said the Supreme Court had wrongly confirmed his death sentence before he had exhausted all his legal options. His arguments were, however, rejected by the president as well as the Supreme Court.