Jageer, Sep 28 (2006): “If my son is hanged for the sake of nation I would be a proud mother,” says Aisha Guru, the mother of Muhammad Afzal Guru who has been sentenced to death for his alleged role in the Parliament attack.
 Since the day of his arrest, she said, he didn’t get a chance to defend himself. “If he had got a fair trial, he might have been a freeman,” Aisha told Greater Kashmir at her dingy house in this small hamlet, five kilometers from Apple Town Sopur Thursday.
 She said everybody was suggesting to the family to approach the President for mercy. “Till today nobody listened to us. Now will President listen to us?”
Aisha asked as she broke down with Tabassum, the wife of Afzal, consoling her.
 Tabassum, 30, said she met Afzal in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. “He told me not to approach anybody for mercy. He told me he wants to die a dignified death,” she recalled of the August 12 meeting.
 “He told me to provide good education to our seven-year-old son Ghalib,” she said, adding that Afzal insisted not to plead before anyone in Delhi. “Afzal felt that whosoever I approach will humiliate me.”
 But she said she would soon meet the President “for the sake of Ghalib.”
 “I will plead before the Indian President because when my son grows up he should not blame me for not doing enough to save his father,” Tabassum said in a choked voice.
 Tabassum, who has been staying with her parents since Afzals’ arrest, said she has learned to live despite all odds. However, Ghalib asks questions which pains her, she said. “Ghalib keeps on asking when will his father return home.”
 “One day when his classmates told him his father would be hanged to death, he came home and tried to hang himself with a ceiling fan,” Tabassum said. “However, my father entered the room and prevented him from doing so. When I asked him what he was doing he said he wanted to see what Phansi (hanging) means.”
 Asked if anybody offered the family help during all these years, Tabassum, said, “Afzal has strictly told us not to take any help from anybody. I stay with my parents and they take care of me and my son.” (Note Afzal Guru’s mother passed away in September 2012)

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