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Mainstream, Vol XLVIII, No 20, May 8, 2010

Death Sentence to Ajmal Kasab

Editorial

Monday 10 May 2010, by SC

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In the end the Indian judicial system and democracy have triumphed. Ajmal Amir Kasab, the young Pakistani who with his group of motivated terrorists, trained in and supervised from Pakistani soil, carried out the audacious Mumbai terror attack in November 2008, killing in the process 166 persons, both Indians and foreigners, and who was personally responsible for 72 deaths due to indiscriminate firing, has been convicted and sentenced to death by Special Sessions Judge M.L. Tahiliyani in Mumbai; coming as these did within less than a year of the start of the trial one could not miss the significance of the verdict. The conviction came on May 3 and the death sentence on May 6. However, while 20 members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (including LeT commanders Hafeez Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi), based in Pakistan, were also convicted, the other two co-accused of Kasab, Fahim Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed, both Indian nationals, were acquitted of “all charges framed against them” (the two had been accused of making and conveying maps of target locasions in Mumbai to the terrorists).

The judge pronounced the death sentence as punishment for Kasab’s acts on four counts while he was given life imprisonment on six counts. The four counts on which death sentence was awarded to him were: murdering 72 persons on November 26, 2008, conspiring to murder, committing acts under Section 16 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, and waging war against the nation. The judge was convinced after weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of Kasab’s crime that the former far outstripped the latter. He further pointed out that there was no chance of the terrorist being reformed, and his indiscriminate killing of women and children was indeed inexonerable. In fact Justice Tahiliyani observed that “words can’t express the brutality” of Kasab’s acts and the death sentence was in proportion to the enormity of his crime.

Now the death sentence will have to be upheld by the Bombay High Court and thereafter Kasab will get an opportunity to appeal to the Supreme Court. So it will be several months before the execution is actually carried out, according to legal opinion. However, any attempt to short-circuit this process, as is being hinted by certain sections including some members of the families of the victims, would be quite costly in terms of undermining both our judicial system and democratic values as ably upheld by the Special Sessions Court verdict.

What is unfortunate is that sections of the media are trying to whip up a peculiar brand of jingoism on this issue targeting the India-Pakistan dialogue (decided at the Indo-Pak summit meeting on the sidelines of the Thimphu SAARC Summit) as well. No doubt this mindset is based on a chauvinistic anti-Pakistan approach, an anathema in the present day and age. Likewise public celebration greeting the judgment by exploding crackers was uncalled for as such demonstrative actions did little to assuage the feelings of the victims’ family members even if the magnitude of the trauma and tragedy suffered by them should never be sought to be minimised.

Yet another surreptitious campaign from interested quarters is to point to the delay in executing Afzal Guru (the sole accused in the 2001 Parliament House attack case sentenced to death by the Supreme Court) and indicating that Kasab could also meet a similar fate. Those spreading this idea conveniently forget a vital difference: apart from a mercy petition to the President urging her to commute the death sentence of Afzal Guru, the fact is that Afzal, an Indian national, might have abetted the Parliament House attack but was not directly involved in it unlike Kasab.

Kasab has been convicted and sentenced to death after an elaborate trial following the highest standards of our judicial system thereby projecting the vitality of our democratic structure. Let us now not weaken both by trying to expedite his execution in the name of waging a resolute war against terrorism. Are those resorting to such an exercise wittingly or unwittingly relying on the eye-for-an-eye dictum? If so, they have become completely oblivious of Mahatma Gandhi’s warning that this behaviour had the potentiality of “making the world blind”.

Terrorism and terrorists are enemies of the people, as Justice Tahiliyani has aptly proclaimed. But jingoism and chauvinism cannot offer an effective answer. Rather, these would turn out to be counterproductive in the long run.

May 6 S.C.

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