Yakub Memon was hanged at 7am on July 30, 2015, after a nail-biting midnight legal drama. Quite understandably, the newspapers that morning looked clueless and outdated. TV screens and social media had taken the story far ahead from the newspapers.But for their edition on July 31, newspapers had one whole day to figure out what happened and take the story ahead with the kind of detailing and perspective which TV doesn’t care for.Even then, looks like at least one of the newspapers managed to make an egregious mistake.On Friday, this was the front-page banner headline of The New Indian Express. As you can see, the headline screams that Yakub Memon, just before he was hanged, accepted that he was guilty and sought that Allah forgives him. The kicker below the headline reads, “Yakub Memon repents before hanging.”According to the report by Kiran Tare of TNIE, sources told the reporter that “Memon did not say anything except two lines of customary confession before he was hanged”. The report even quotes Yakub has having said, “I accept my guilt. May Allah forgive me.”This runs contrary to other media reports.The most detailed version of what happened before Yakub Memon was hanged can be found in Mid-Day.In a detailed story with the byline ‘A Correspondent’, which you can read here, the story narrates the sequence of events from 5:15AM.The section of the story which talks of his last words can be read below,“Yakub kept saying: “Main begunah hoon (I am innocent). This is injustice.” A few minutes before the hanging, as per the jail manual, a spiritual leader asked Yakub to confess his sin, but he replied that he was innocent. “Before the hood was placed on Yakub’s face, he insisted that he wanted to see the rising sun, which we could not allow as the hanging had to take place before sunrise. He kept taking Allah’s name, only getting louder as the noose was tied around his neck. He was calm, however, and showed no remorse,” said a jail official.‘Allah, the Almighty, is All wise and the Knower of All things. I am innocent and I must not be hanged. It’s injustice and I am a victim of political murder,’ Yakub said."A report on The Indian Express (not TNIE) also states that he maintained he was innocent when his brother Suleiman and cousin Usman met him on Wednesday.One of the reports has to be wrong. And whoever is just made a horrible journalistic mistake and did great injustice to the family.If he had indeed not confessed to his crime, a banner headline screaming that he accepted his guilt and repented is significant misreporting reeking of bias, not to mention the impact it has on the readers who will now interpret the death of Yakub differently.A member of the editorial team at TNIE, unwilling to be quoted, clarified that both versions of the story are correct. The person said that his ‘confession’ was customary and something which all death row convicts have to do before he they are hanged. “He did say ‘main begaunah hoon’ to the guard outside,’ clarified the staff. An email sent to the Editor of TNIE seeking an official clarification on the story did not receive a response at the time of publishing the story.But the Mid-Day story specifically says that when a preacher asked him to confess, he did not.An email sent to Mid-Day editor Sachin Kalbag also went unanswered.Media critic Sevanti Ninan, not wanting to comment on this issue specifically, says that the whole coverage around his death was disturbing. “There must be some decorum even in reporting around a death penalty case. There was no sensible reporting of it, especially on TV,” she says, “And who are these ‘sources’ the media keeps quoting? Jail authorities?”“Everybody in the media is just living off the execution,” adds Ninan.