Charges divided under 3 heads
Kasab has been held guilty of killing 166 persons and injuring all others. However, the 86 charges levelled against him have been bifurcated as per the actual role he played. The court has divided the charges against him under three categories: criminal conspiracy, waging war against the nation and murder.
CONSPIRACY
The court held that the accused was guilty of criminal conspiracy under Section 120 (B) of the IPC. It was proved that he had conspired with the other accused. Though Kasab retracted his confession given in front of a magistrate at a late stage in the trial, it was held as circumstantial evidence. Kasab in his retracted confession, had graphically shown how he was trained, where and for how long he was trained. He confessed about the explosives, weapons and haversacks and all of this corroborates to show that it was a case of conspiracy.
WAGING WAR
The court held that the conspiracy to commit all the other acts (Section 120 (B) IPC) was different from that of committing the crime of waging war against the nation under Section 121 IPC. The court was convinced beyond doubt that the type of preparation was not possible if it was merely a simple case of murder. The fact that the accused used boats such as the Al-Husseini and Kuber, the sort of weapons and the preparation were nothing short of waging war with a nation.
Moreover the court read out an abstract of a telephonic conversation between one of the two terrorists at the Oberoi-Trident and his handler. When the terrorist told him that he was quartered, the other person told him to continue the war, explode a hand grenade and walk out.
The nature of training given to the terrorists, the quality of arms and ammunition, weapons given to them proves beyond doubt that it was a case of waging war and conspiracy hatched for the same and hence the accused was guilty under Section 121, 121(1) (a) and 122 (preparation for waging war) IPC.
MURDER
Kasab was held guilty of charges under Section 302 read with 34 IPC in all cases, except seven in which he was held guilty of 302 IPC for directly and solely killing the people he did, including assistant sub-inspector Tukaram Ombale, Vinod Gupta and A. Solanki. Other charges included wrongful confinement, abduction, mischief and robbery. Interestingly, he was found to be not guilty of forgery as the identity card that he was carrying was not forged by him.
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