Kasab plea: SC reserves verdict
After a marathon hearing spreading nearly a month, the Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its judgment on Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab’s appeal challenging the award of death sentence to him in the Mumbai terror attack, while the Maharashtra police made a strong plea for showing no leniency to him considering the enormity of the crime.
The arguments in the Supreme Court stretched for 28 days in different sessions by senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, appointed as amicus curiae to plead Kasab’s case, and former solicitor-general Gopal Subramaniam for the Maharashtra police.
Mr Subramaniam made a strong plea to a bench of Justices Aftab Alam and C.K. Prasad to maintain the capital punishment to Kasab awarded by the trial court in October 2010 and upheld by the Bombay high court.
Mr Subramaniam said the enormity of 26/11 attack on Mumbai and the clinching evidence about Kasab’s involvement in the larger conspiracy to wage the war against India with the active support from terror outfits in Pakistan, had been proved beyond doubt in the trial court as well as the high court.
The state’s counsel had argued that there was nothing unusual about awarding the capital punishment to him for such a series of heinous crimes committed by him as it was given by the courts below as per the “permissible” sentencing policy laid down in the “laws of the land”.
“The death sentence to Ajmal Kasab was awarded as per the permissible means of the punishment recognised under our Constitution and the law,” Mr Subramaniam had argued while rebutting Mr Ramachandran’s argument that Kasab was not directly involved in the conspiracy to wage the war against India as he only acted as a “pawn” in the hands of terror outfits.
The government counsel had brushed aside his arguments, stating that such assertion by the amicus curiae was not sustainable as Kasab and nine other terrorists killed by the security forces were in “constant touch with 26/11 attack masterminds in Pakistan via satellite phones during the four-day long carnage”.
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