Coast Guard had spotted fishing trawler “Kuber” six nautical miles from Mumbai Coast on November 27, 2008, after Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab told the police that he and nine others had travelled in this vessel to reach here, the Bombay high court was informed on Tuesday.
Government Counsel Ujjwal Nikam, seeking confirmation of death penalty for the lone surviving terrorist Kasab, said the Coast Guard searched for Kuber in the sea from a helicopter and after sighting the vessel, its officials kept a close watch till CG Ship Sankalp arrived.
Nikam was submitting arguments to justify that the fishing trawler was not tampered with before it was seized for investigations. The body of navigator Amarsinh Solanki and some GPS and satellite phones were recovered from Kuber at the instance of Kasab, he pointed out.
Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice R.V. More had raised queries on Monday asking Nikam to explain the sequence of events leading to seizure of Kuber because the trial court had discarded earlier evidence in this regard.
The bench wanted to know how the prosecution could justify that the vessel was not tampered with.
Nikam submitted that Kasab had confessed to having killed Solanki by slitting his throat and throwing his body in the engine room of Kuber which they had abandoned in the sea before setting out on a dingy, a rubber boat, brought from Pakistan.
Government Counsel Ujjwal Nikam submitted that the trial judge had erred in discarding the evidence leading to the seizure of Kuber.
He argued that it is not the case of Kasab or his lawyers that someone had planted Solanki's body in the trawler. In fact, Kasab had himself confessed that he killed Solanki in the vessel, although he had retracted his version later.
The Mumbai police had claimed that Kasab and nine other terrorists had started their journey from Karachi in Al-husseini boat and then hijacked Kuber in Indian waters and landed at Badhwar Park in south Mumbai before going separately in pairs to their assigned locations.
Kasab appeared for about 10 minutes in the video conference link on Tuesday. He looked normal and did not throw tantrums as he had done earlier.