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Guru was hanged three years earlier while Chidambaram was still in office. 

 

Going against the decision handed over by his own UPA government, Chidambaram was quoted by Economic Times as saying, "I think it is possible to hold an honest opinion that the Afzal Guru case was perhaps not correctly decided."

The seasoned Congressman said that he could not express anything earlier because it was his government which decided Guru's fate but clarified that a certain individual has the right to hold an opinion. 

When asked what he would have done, Chidambaram said that it is difficult to say anything as these are different matters and depends on a lot of factors. 

"There were grave doubts about his involvement (in the conspiracy behind the attack on Parliament) and even if he was involved, there were grave doubts about the extent of his involvement. He could have been imprisoned for life without parole for (the) rest of his natural life," the former union Finance Minister said.

Chidambaram also took a swipe at the BJP for terming the JNU students as seditious.

He said, "Free speech is not seditious speech. Is your speech a spark in the powder keg (inciting violence) only then it amounts to sedition."

Reiterating his party's stance, he said, "It is an age where students have the right to be wrong…And the university is a place where you don’t always need to be profound, you can be ridiculous also."