An Indian judge yesterday sentenced to death a Pakistani man convicted of murder and waging war on India for his role in the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Judge M.L. Tahaliyani imposed the death penalty against Pakistani national Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, 22, after he was found guilty at a special prison court on Monday after a year-long trial.
“He should be hanged by the neck until he is dead,” he said.
Branded a “killing machine” and “cruelty incarnate” by the prosecution, Kasab was the only gunman caught alive during the assault in November 2008 that left 166 dead.
Public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam had called for the death penalty because of the premeditated nature of the attacks, which saw 10 Islamist gunmen attack hotels, a railway station, a restaurant and a Jewish center during a 60-hour siege.
Observers say the death penalty was likely to trigger a lengthy, possibly open-ended, appeal through the Indian courts.
The government officially supports capital punishment for what the Supreme Court in New Delhi has called the “rarest of rare” cases, but no execution has been carried out since 2004 and only two since 1998.
Many pleas for clemency to the president are still pending, including ones from the killers of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991, and a Kashmiri separatist who attacked India’s parliament in 2001.
The prosecution had a wealth of evidence against Kasab, including DNA and fingerprints, security camera footage, photographs and hundreds of witnesses.
An image of him carrying a powerful AK-47 assault rifle and backpack at Mumbai’s main railway station, where he and an accomplice killed 52 people, has become a defining image of the atrocity.
Some of the victims’ families have long called for Kasab’s execution, and the clamor for him to be put to death grew louder after Monday’s widely expected guilty verdict.
Defense lawyer K.P. Pawar has argued against capital punishment, suggesting that his client was brainwashed into committing the offenses while under the influence of Pakistan-based extremists.
The Indian government said the verdict on Kasab sent a strong message to Pakistan not to “export terror” beyond its borders.
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