Bombay high court upholds death sentence for Ajmal Kasab

The Bombay high court on Monday upheld the death sentence handed to Pakistani terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab by a trial court for his role in the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai.

However, the high court rejected the state government’s appeal against the acquittal of co-accused Indian nationals Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed by the trial court. The high court said that the “prosecution has not been able to establish beyond reasonable doubt evidence of the two being part of the conspiracy”.

As a smiling Kasab watched the proceedings through a videoconferencing facility, the high court said that the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist was “a threat to society, who killed seven people directly and abetted in the murder of 166 others in cold blood” during the terror attack. It also held that the conspiracy of the 26/11 attack was hatched in Pakistan.

The high court confirmed that three senior police officers — Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar — were indeed killed by Kasab and his associate Abu Ismail on 26/11. Kasab had pleaded that he was only a spectator to the incident.

Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam welcomed the verdict. “This judgment will send a strong message to all those who are indulging in such terrorist activities,” he said. He added he would ask the state to appeal against Ansari and Ahmed’s acquittal.
Kasab’s lawyer Farhana Shah said that her client would be informed of his option to appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court.

In the judgment, which ran into 1,208 pages, a division bench of Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice RV More said: “He displayed extreme brutality and cruelty in committing the murders of innocent people, which included women, children, aged people and policemen.”
  
“The murders were committed in an extremely brutal grotesque, diabolical, revolting or dastardly manner so as to arouse extreme indignation of the community. This indeed is a rarest of rare case involving uncommon and unprecedented crime for which the sentence of life imprisonment is inadequate,” justices Ranjana Desai and RV More said.

While listening to the hearing, Kasab, clad in a white kurta and sporting a beard, looked disinterested and often lowered his head.

The court also dismissed the defence’s claim that Kasab was mentally unsound. “His mental age overrides his physical age. He has never shown any repentance or remorse, but has loudly proclaimed that he wants to create more ‘fidayeen’ by setting an example with his conduct. All his actions, the manner in which he committed the crime, his cleverly trying to change his stand in the court and other attendant circumstances portray a scheming mind, and not a mind of a mentally unstable person,” the judges said.

The high court also confirmed that the 26/11 attack was a ‘war against India’ and needed to be dealt with ‘sternly’ in a manner that would instill ‘confidence in the public’. The bench said: “Perhaps the weightiest aggravating circumstance is that Kasab waged a war against the government of India pursuant to a conspiracy which was hatched in Pakistan, the object of which was to destabilise the government of India and to weaken India’s economic might… It was also aimed at creating ill-will and disaffection among different religions of India so as to damage its secular fabric.”

The court rejected the defence’s argument that a death sentence would turn Kasab into a ‘martyr’. “We unhesitantly reject this argument… We want those who are desirous of emulating him to know that courts do not take a kindly view of such people… Soft handling of a crime like this will erode the public confidence in the efficacy of law,” it said.