Mumbai, May 06: Justice was finally delivered to the 166 people who lost their lives in the 26/11 carnage. Seventeen months after the trial began, lone surviving Pakistani gunman Ajmal Kasab was on Thursday sentenced to death for complicity in the most audacious terrorist attack ever on India.
Special Judge ML Tahaliyani, who conducted the trial of Kasab for nearly a year in the high security central prison at Arthur Road in Central Mumbai, read out the death sentence at 1.28 pm to a packed court room, in Kasab’s presence.
He has been awarded death on four counts which included murder, waging war against the nation.
The 22-year-old from Faridkot in Pakistan, who along with nine other terrorists had let loose death and destruction on Mumbai, broke down when the judge read out the sentence against him.
Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam and defence lawyer KP Pawar were also present in the court.
On May 03, in his 1522-page verdict, Judge Tahaliyani had held Kasab guilty of almost all 86 charges he was arraigned for, including that of mass murder and waging war against the nation.
The defence had pleaded for leniency for the “young” terrorist, arguing, “Kasab is a human being and should be given a chance to reform.”
The absconding 20 Pakistanis- including Lashkar-e-Toiba founder Hafiz Saeed and chief of operations Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi – who were found guilty of plotting the entire operation to hit India’s commercial nerve centre were also handed out…..
In his arguments over quantum of sentence, Nikam had pressed for death penalty, he said, “Such a monster should be given death penalty…He is an agent of devil himself. If Kasab is given lesser punishment, India will become a soft target for every self-styled terror group.”
Nikam described the killing of 166 people in the terror strikes as a rarest of the rare case fit for awarding death to the convict.
“There has been a high degree of cruelty and Kasab had total disregard for life. Kasab is a killing machine and such machines are manufactured in Pakistan,” Nikam told the court.
The 60-hour audacious attack that began on the night of Nov 26, 2008 and went on till the afternoon of Nov 29, 2009 was carried out by 10 Pakistani terrorists, including Kasab. The terror strike left 166 Indians and foreigners dead.
—-Agencies