Jul 18 (Mumbai Mirror): The Nagpur jail staff is ready to hang Yakub Memon (pictured below) - the only convict on death row for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts - at 7 am, July 30, if the Supreme Court gives the go-ahead. KP Bakshi, additional chief secretary (home), said the jail staff has given a report to the home department that they are ready for the hanging.

A prisons department official said that Memon is medically fit for hanging. "We are waiting to see what happens to the curative petition [for mercy, filed by Memon in the Supreme Court]. A lot depends on that," the official said.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has also said that the state will follow the Supreme Court directive on carrying out the execution. Memon, a qualified chartered accountant, was one of the 100 people convicted (out of the 125 put to trial) by Mumbai's Special TADA Court in its judgement pronounced in 2006 and 2007. The court had awarded death sentence to 12 out of the 100 convicts - of which rest of the 11 were bomb planters. During the appeal in Supreme Court, one of the convicts on death row died and the SC commuted all death sentences to life till death except Yakub's - making him the only convict on death row.

He was found guilty of financing the blasts through co-accused Mulchand Shah and the firm Tejarat International owned by his absconding brother Ayub Memon. Yakub was also convicted for providing tickets to the co-accused to travel to Pakistan for arms training and was found guilty of possessing arms and ammunition and distributing them among the co-accused, besides purchasing the vehicles used in the explosions. He was the only accused to get death sentence for these charges.

In March 2013, the Supreme Court confirmed his death sentence. He later filed a mercy petition that was rejected by the President.