In a dramatic twist to what was turning out to be a long-drawn terror trial, Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone Lashkar-e-Toiba gunman captured alive during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, surprised the special court trying him by confessing to his crimes today and asking the judge to end the hearings and just punish him.
Through the day?s court proceedings, a calm and composed Kasab, 21, clinically narrated his journey from a decorator in a small shop in Pakistan?s Jhelum district to a Lashkar jehadi who ended up becoming the face of the unprecedented attack on the metropolis. While much of what Kasab said in court has already been known through the prosecution case, the Lashkar man claimed that an Indian jehadi with the alias Abu Jundal taught him and his accomplices Hindi in one of the many camps they were trained in.
He said he had waited for Pakistan to accept him as a Pakistani and decided to confess once Islamabad did so. While the Mumbai Police and the prosecution claimed his confession as a victory for the watertight case they said they had built, Kasab?s lawyer said he was completely surprised as he did not know this was coming despite having met his Pakistani prisoner on Friday.
Legal experts said that the confession would greatly speed up the trial against Kasab while the trial of the two others accused, Syed Sabahuddin and Fahim Ansari, was likely to be split and tried separately.
The police and the prosecution also said that there were some contradictions and discrepancies in Kasab?s confession today and the one he had made while in custody and later retracted and that they would place them before the court.
If Kasab accepts these contradictions as well and admits to them, his trial would effectively end and the two sides will argue over the punishment, they said. If not, these discrepancies will have to proved through further depositions.
Talking about the Mumbai attacks, Kasab said he was merely a foot soldier who had opened fire only inside the CST station. ?I was relying on Abu Ismail, my companion, for orders. I had no idea what the next move was. We opened fire at the CST station and then headed towards Cama hospital? he claimed.