Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Former Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam died yesterday. The 83-year-old suffered a heart attack whilst delivering a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management in Shillong. The Indian government has decreed seven days of national mourning.
A defence and aerospace scientist, India’s 11th president was a pioneering figure in the country’s nuclear programme. A recipient of India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, he was a staunch opponent of the death penalty.
Born in 1931 in Rameswaram (Tamil Nadu) to a Muslim family, Kalam studied physics and aerospace engineering.
For 40 years, he worked as a scientist for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), on the development of India's space programme and military missile technology.
Called the "Missile Man of India", in 1998 he was one of the project leaders during the Pokhran-II nuclear tests.
Elected president of India in 2002, he is remembered by everyone as the "people's president".
During his tenure, he spoke out against the death penalty in at least three occasions, and received nearly 50 mercy petitions from death row inmates, listing the reasons why the government should consider clemency in each case.
The only mercy plea that he rejected was from Dhannajay Chatterji, a lift operator convicted of rape and killing a young girl in Kolkata, in 2004.
A decade later, speaking about his experience at Rashtrapati Bhavan (Presidential Residence), Kalam mentioned a study by the President’s Office on the mercy petitions.
"This study revealed to my surprise that almost all the cases which were pending had a social and economic bias," the former President said. Rhetorically, he asked why only poor people were on death row.
A Muslim, the former president always expressed his appreciation for the contribution of Christians to nation building.
On several occasions, he remembered that in the 1960s, the Catholic clergy in Thumba (Kerala) had donated nearly 81 hectares of land to scientific research and the country’s space programme. (NC)