New Delhi, July 29 : Pakistani death row convict Ajmal Kasab has moved the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court judgment confirming the death sentence slapped on him by a trial court for his role in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
As Kasab filed the appeal directly through jail authorities, who sent it to the Supreme Court Secretary-General, details are not known.
Once the appeal against the February 21 judgment is processed and numbered by the Registry, the Supreme Court will list it for hearing.
Kasab is the only Pakistani terrorist who was caught alive, while nine accomplices were killed. The terror attack claimed 166 lives and left 238 injured.
In his letter to the Supreme Court, Kasab has sent that his plea be heard. It is upto the Supreme Court to give him a chance of video-conferencing.
Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government has filed appeals against the acquittal of co-accused Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed, both Indian nationals, by the trial court.
The High Court said, “The prosecution has not been able to establish beyond reasonable doubt evidence of the two being part of the conspiracy.”
As for Kasab, the High Court said the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist was a threat to society, who killed seven people directly and abetted in the cold-blooded murder of others. It also held that the conspiracy for the 26/11 attack was hatched in Pakistan.
Rejecting Kasab's plea that he was only a spectator and had not killed anyone, the High Court confirmed that three senior police officers — Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar — were indeed killed by him and his associate Abu Ismail.
“Kasab displayed extreme brutality and cruelty in committing the murders of innocent people, who 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 the rarest of rare cases involving uncommon and unprecedented crime for which life imprisonment is inadequate,” the High Court said.
It dismissed the defence 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 the mind of a mentally unstable person.”
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