KASAB HANGED, WILL TERRORISM?
Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the Pakistani National and the
lone surviving terrorist of 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attacks, was hanged on 21
November 2012 at Pune’s Yerwada Jail at 7:30 am. The Home Minister of
Maharashtra R.R. Patil confirmed that Kasab was hanged. It is quite significant
to note that the President Pranab Mukherjee decided to reject Kasab’s mercy plea
while 14 other petitions till October 2012 were pending and this also included
Parliament attack terrorist- Afzal Guru besides other important names. Kasab was
a Pakistani militant and belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group. He was
born on 13 July 1987 at Faridkot, Pakistan and is 25 years old. Kasab was found
guilty in 80 offences which included murder, possession of explosives, waging a
war against India and many more. The Supreme Court of India upheld the death
sentence of Kasab on 29 August 2012. The defense lawyers on Kasab’s side are
Defense lawyers Amin Solkar, Farhana Shah and Abbas Kazmi. He was hanged five
days before the fourth anniversary of the brutal terror attack on Mumbai that
claimed 166 lives and sieged Mumbai for continuous three days. In the top-secret
operation, the sole surviving terrorist of 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks Mohammed
Ajmal Amir Kasab was hanged till death in Yerwada jail, Pune, on 21 November
2012. Kasab had killed 166 people on 26 November 2008 along with 9 other
terrorists from Pakistan.
Kasab was the only terrorist who had been captured alive at
the scene of the violence. The grainy image of the young man, a gun in his hand
and a backpack slung casually over his shoulder, has become an icon of the
attack.
Kasab’s death sentence had been pronounced by a lower court
in Mumbai in 2008 and was subsequently upheld by the Bombay High Court in 2011
and India’s top court in August 2012. Earlier this month, his mercy plea — his
last chance to stay his sentence — was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee.
“It was a very somber duty that we had to perform,” Foreign Minister Salman
Khurshid said in a press briefing “It could have developed into a simmering sore
in our country.”
