Kasab disclosed 26/11 terror conspiracy hatched in Pakistan: Supreme Court told

NEW DELHI: The Maharashtra government today told the Supreme Court that the arrest of Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab proved crucial as he disclosed that the conspiracy in 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case was hatched in Pakistan.

"Had Kasab not been caught alive, then it would not have been possible to know that outsiders were involved in the mayhem and confusion would have percolated that it was done by insiders," former Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam, appearing for the state government, submitted before a bench of justices Aftab Alam and C K Prasad.

Subramaniam, along with special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, said, "The entire criminal conspiracy for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack was hatched in Pakistan" and among the 10 terrorists involved in the carnage, the first casuality had come from the hands of Kasab, who had killed the navigator of the Indian boat used by them on way to reach Mumbai.

"Kasab, who was apprehended at Chaupati the same night, made a disclosure that he beheaded the navigator of the Indian boat, Kuber, used by him and nine of his accomplices to reach at Budhawar Park in Mumbai," they said, while refuting the allegation that 24-year-old Kasab, the sole convict in 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case, was not given fair trial.

Prosecution asserted that the death sentence awarded to Kasab was a permissible means of punishment for the offence and cited the barbaric and cruel manner in which the navigator of Kuber, Amar Singh Solanki, was beheaded by him.

"Police, which had toed the vessel, had found that Solanki was killed in a cruel manner," they said and narrated the entire sequence of events, starting from the conspiracy hatched in Pakistan by Lashkar-e-Toiba to the day of incident in which 166 people were killed.

Subramaniam contended that Kasab was never tortured or maltreated and there has been no violation of his constitutional rights.