Who is Mohammad Afzal Guru from the book, Field Notes on Democracy?

Mohammad Afzal Guru was a Kashmiri separatist convicted for his involvement in the 2001 attacks on Parliament in New Delhi. He is the subject of Roy’s chapter, “And His Life Should Become Extinct” and heavily referenced in the chapters, “Breaking the News” and “Custodial Confessions, the Media, and the Law.” In Field Notes on Democracy, Roy argues against Afzal’s execution out of the belief that he has been unfairly targeted for his Muslim beliefs and that, if he dies, India will never get to the bottom of what happened in 2001. Despite Roy’s arguments, Afzal was eventually executed in 2013, four years after the publication of Field Notes on Democracy.