Is Ajmal Kasab really dead? BJP’s forgotten demand for re-investigation into 26/11

It is hard to believe 14 years have gone by since the shock and horror that every Indian felt when, unbelievably even now, 10 (officially) armed-to-teeth terrorists made over a billion Indians helpless on the evening of 26 November 2008 through their mad horrific killing spree that lasted forever.

26/11, perhaps the worst terror event in India after the 1993 blasts (again in Mumbai), was a nightmare that broke to me on my way back home from an advertising agency in Hyderabad – the same loving place the terrorists’ ID cards showed they belonged to.

The ruling UPA was losing fervour rapidly and recession had already set in in the US. PM Manmohan Singh was desperate to get the Nuclear Deal passed – even if he had to resign just because India had given a word to the US. Strange things were happening and elections were round the corner. There was a premonition of a war or a terror attack for a close news watcher like me.

But not in my wildest imagination did I expect something like 26/11. It was not just the bullets and the bombs (hundreds, including kids, killed instantaneously), the hostages and the fire and the live telecast that shook me. What was bursting in my head, like in a billion Indians, were the questions and counter questions.

Pakistan couldn’t have done it (alone) – there was no serious requirement for the country to rake up a war with a friendly government in power in India. The terrorists couldn’t have entered India without the support of locals and knowledge of the authorities – one may call it Intelligence failure, etc, but even a constable in Indian cities knows what’s happening at the other end of the city any day.

Then the precision, the audacity, the meticulous planning, and repeated failure of authorities to act – commandos were sent from Delhi (if I remember correctly) the next day because, the government said, only special commandos were trained for such operations!

The “Hindu/saffron terror” remarks in the parliament by the most powerful politicians were already worrying me – not because of the possibility but because it had no base and because I was unable to join the dots.

Other things are well known, but what was more shocking, in fact, paralysing, was the aftermath – the utter sense of hopelessness in any kind of justice – that prevails even now.

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab’s trial was a pain that justified euthanasia for many of us. Reports of biryani for the “baby-faced” boy…it went on and on, and at times it felt like he may escape the jail or the death penalty — Kasab had claimed he was working on orders and was just a contract killer. And then, on 21 November 2012 (when again elections were round the corner and UPA’s defeat had been cast), all hopes were dashed.

It was simply announced that Kasab had been hanged in a Pune jail (about 160km away from where he had been lodged – due to lack of hangmen in Mumbai we were told) secretly and swiftly. His body was secretly buried in the Yerawada jail – some reports said it was thrown into the Arabian Sea.

By then, it had been established that Kasab was from Faridkot in Pakistan – which the Pak government accepted reluctantly, while nothing significant was found about the others or the motive.

This was an end that certainly wasn’t a closure. An that’s where the doubts begin. Many have asked why a post-mortem was not conducted; why the unnerving secrecy? Who hatched the 26/11 plot? And was Kasab really hanged?

A few years ago, on a social media site, there were posts regarding Kasab – that he was alive and was working in a restaurant in one of the southern states of India with complete blessings of his masters.

Here are a few snippets that raise more doubts about the matter:

The Dawn (Pakistan) The unending Faridkot mystery – Newspaper – DAWN.COM

“Two Dawn journalists arrived in a neat-looking Faridkot lane in the first week of December, 2008. They were looking for the Kasab home and were met on the way by a man of medium build, clad in shalwar kameez. “Do you know someone from the Kasab family? Are they home?,” the man was asked.

“I am Kasab,” he replied. Then quickly and mechanically, he took out his identity card from his chest pocket, as if he had kept it handy for an impending identification. “Amir Kasab,” the card read.

The advice given by elders to the locals has been to not discuss Ajmal Kasab with anyone. A local imam masjid reportedly used the mosque’s loudspeaker to tell his audience to stay away from the affair. It is this shield of silence that greeted journalists in Faridkot as they converged on the village again looking for stories to mark Ajmal Kasab’s hanging in distant Pune.”

“Then, on Dec 10, 2008, Mahmood Durrani, adviser to the prime minister, did finally accept that Ajmal was a Pakistani citizen — a disclosure that cost Durrani his job. Around the same time, PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif told journalist Kim Barker of evidence which suggested that Ajmal did indeed belong to Faridkot. As the facts emerged, in time, Islamabad did shift from an outright denial to insisting on a distinction between the “state actors” and “non-state” actors, under pressure from India and the West to investigate and try Lashkar-e-Taiba men accused of masterminding Mumbai attacks.”

The Dawn also said: “First, it is fairly clear that the attacks were launched to push Pakistan and India apart, and perhaps even to the brink of war. That common sense ultimately prevailed is a good thing.”

The Indian Express (India), 10 April 2009, Is Ajmal Kasab’s mother in Mumbai? | India News,The Indian Express

“Ahead of the trial of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving 26/11 terrorist, a woman claiming to be his mother came to the Mumbai Police headquarters last week seeking a meeting with him, a police officer said on Friday.

The woman, who appeared to be in her forties, went to the Citizen Facilitation Centre of the police headquarters in south Mumbai and demanded to meet Kasab, who is presently lodged in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail.

The woman spoke with a Punjabi accent and was dressed in traditional attire. She wanted to meet the head of the Crime Branch and said she had come to meet him since she was Kasab’s mother, the officer said. The lady claimed that Kasab had been kidnapped from her custody when he was a child and asked for a DNA test to be done on her to verify her claim.

However, officials sent her off without allowing her to enter the complex but did not record her antecedents, “doubting her mental stability”.

“The lady had come here and left after making these claims. She has not made any official application. No official report has been made on the matter,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Headquarters) V M Jadhav said. If any application or letter had been received from the woman her claims would have been verified, said Jadhav.

The Tribune (Pakistan), 11 December 2015, Ajmal Kasab is alive, claims key witness (tribune.com.pk)

In an unexpected turn, a key witness in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks claimed Ajmal Kasab, the lone gunman caught alive after the attack and later hanged, was alive.

“Mudassir Lakhvi, the headmaster of a primary school in Faridkot, where Ajmal Kasab studied for three years told the court that he taught Kasab and he is alive,” a court official told PTI on Thursday.

The Suspicious Death Of Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab (conspiracytheories.in)

Till 2012, Kasab was still not executed and the government had spent crores to keep him in a high-security prison in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail. Now, even though logically, the hangman should have been brought to Mumbai, the day before his hanging, Kasab was taken to the Yerwada Jail in Pune. He was hanged the very next day on 21st November 2012.

Conspiracy theorists say that Kasab actually died before his day of execution. Apparently, he was suffering from dengue and lost his life due to lack of proper treatment. Now, as he had succumbed to the disease, the high officials had no option other than staging a hanging in a different city.

It is said that this ‘hanging’ was so secretive that even top leaders were informed of it when the news came on TV. Mostly, Kasab had been taken out of Mumbai and was just buried in Pune.

IPCS, 10 May 2010, Ajmal Kasab: A Mile Stone in Investigation, Trial and Due Process | IPCS

“The trial further established that the court is not a rubber stamp in India, whatever be the terrorist provocation. Two others charge sheeted along with Kasab, were acquitted by the court. The investigation had alleged that these two accused, Sabauddin Ahmed and Fahim Ansari, had given the terrorists maps of the various places that had been attacked. The court found the evidence produced by the prosecution unreliable.”

Importantly, in February 2020, former Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria released his memoir “Let Me Say It Now”. He made startling claims in the book which he couldn’t do while in office due to security reasons.

His claims include:

• Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT of Pakistan) planned to project 26/11 as a case of “Hindu terror”.
• “We would have found an identity card on his person (Kasab) with a fictitious name: Samir Dinesh Chaudhari, student of Arunodaya Degree and P.G. College, Vedre Complex, Dilkhushnagar [sic], Hyderabad, 500060, resident of 254, Teachers Colony, Nagarabhavi, Bengaluru.
• “There would have been screaming headlines in newspapers claiming how Hindu terrorists had attacked Mumbai. Over-the- top TV journalists would have made a beeline for Bengaluru to interview his family and neighbours”.
• Pakistan’s ISI and LeT were desperate to kill Kasab by “hook or by crook”. There were specific Intelligence inputs that the Dawood Ibrahim gang had been given the task.
• Mumbai Police did not want to release any pictures or information related to the case to the media for security reasons, but Kasab’s photos were released by central agencies despite Mumbai Police’s objections.

Kasab’s confessions were also strange in hindsight. He said exactly what the media had reported – that he had tied a saffron thread around his wrist to look like a Hindu. The training given was just for this operation. But, strangely, he said the specific targets were the Americans, the British and the Israelis because they “had greatly oppressed the Muslims”. According to his confession, “While firing at the hotels, they should take care that no Muslim was killed in their attack.” It should have been the other way round if the objective was to blame Hindu terror.

Reacting to Maria’s claims, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy called 26/11 a “joint operation by the ISI and UPA”.

Not just Swamy, Union minister Piyush Goyal said the plot was hatched through the Congress-led UPA (How Rakesh Maria’s memoir sparked fresh political melee over 26/11 attacks – The Week). “In my view, a deep plot was hatched through Congress-led UPA. We had seen another template of deceit at that time, when they tried to raise a false bogey of Hindu terror, on Chidambaram saying so,” Goyal had said.

BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao had said, “This raises serious questions, if the saffron terror plot was the combined project of the Congress and Pakistan’s spy agency ISI. Around the same time, the UPA coined the saffron terror tag and Rahul Gandhi told US diplomats that India’s homegrown groups are a greater threat to the country then Islamic terror groups.”

BJP MLA Atul Bhatkhalkar demanded a reinvestigation. In a letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Bhatkhalkar said then Congress-NCP government had set up a probe committee headed by former bureaucrat Ram Pradhan, and that its report was not tabled in the state legislature. “Ram Pradhan later said in an interview that [then Union Home minister] P. Chidambaram had told him not to reveal the local connection [of the terror attack]. I urge you to reinvestigate the case and take action against those who speak the Pakistan’s line,” Bhatkhalkar had said.

The arrest of Mohammed Zubair has raised the question of Kasab again. This is bound to happen until there is complete and full closure of 26/11 and Kasab. We need answers and the BJP government must act “on its own demands” before the rug is pulled from under its feet.

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