Mumbai Defendant Says He Would Accept Hanging

Mumbai Defendant Says He Would Accept Hanging

By VIKAS BAJAJ

July 23, 2009

MUMBAI, India — The legal maneuvering over the confession by the sole surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks last November continued Wednesday, with the defendant, Ajmal Kasab, insisting that his admission was not an attempt to avoid the death penalty.

“If anybody is worried that I am trying to escape death by hanging, I’m not,” he declared in court. “If that’s the punishment I am given, so be it.”

It was the third straight day of dramatic testimony in the Mumbai courtroom, where Mr. Kasab stunned Indians on Monday by delivering a lengthy admission of his role in the assault on hotels and other public sites in a brazen attack by militants based in Pakistan that killed more than 160 people.

The court is grappling over whether to accept Mr. Kasab’s confession. The judge overseeing the case, M. L. Tahilyani, said he would rule tomorrow. His decision could affect other cases pending in India and Pakistan.

Lawyers are also arguing about the way in which Mr. Kasab, who is supposed to have no access to newspapers or television, heard about the Pakistani government’s admission that Pakistani citizens were involved in the attack. Mr. Kasab said Tuesday that guards outside his cell told him about the development, which prompted him to confess.

The prosecution asked the court to accept into the record a portion of Mr. Kasab’s admission of guilt on Monday related to the killings at a busy Mumbai train station, where witnesses saw Mr. Kasab and an accomplice mow down dozens of people, but requested that it not admit other aspects of the confession that, it asserts, were filled with “lies and contradiction.”

The prosecutor, Ujjwal Nikam, alleged that Mr. Kasab had deliberately played down his role in the attacks to avoid the death penalty and help his Pakistani counterparts who will be tried across the border. He said any evidence presented in court here could make its way to court there, an argument that Judge Tahilyani discounted.

Later in the hallway, he told reporters that the case would now last for just one more month and that the prosecution would show why Mumbai and foreigners were targeted in the attacks. He also said he would expose the “whole infrastructure of the Lashkar-e-Taiba,” the Pakistani extremist group that India and the United States say masterminded the attacks.

But Mr. Kasab’s lawyer, S. G. Abbas Kazmi, said that his client had been “mentally tortured” by his guards, who told him that the case was now a lost cause for him since Pakistan had given him up and since the police, court and even defense lawyers were Indian. When the judge asked Mr. Kasab whether that was true, he said that this happened some time ago when he was in police custody, not recently.

Mr. Kazmi said the court should pursue one of two options: The judge can accept Mr. Kasab’s plea and issue a judgment and sentence, or he can reject the admission of guilt and prohibit the incriminating statement Mr. Kasab made on Monday from being used during the rest of the trial.

Mr. Nikam complained that the defense lawyer was trying to mislead the court.

Mr. Kasab’s admission has been the latest in a series of surprising incidents in the trial that have included the dismissal of a defense lawyer who had improper contact with a witness.

The Indian press has extensively covered the trial’s every turn. Mr. Nikam and Mr. Kazmi have become familiar faces on television. They are mobbed by reporters every time they step out of the courtroom.

The judge declared part of Mr. Kasab’s testimony on Tuesday, about his indoctrination as a militant, so explosive that he put it under seal.

Mr. Kasab seemed to almost invite a death sentence on Wednesday. “Whatever I have done, I have done in this world,” he said. “It would be better if I am punished in this world. It would be better than God’s punishment.”

Kavita Karkare, the wife of a senior antiterrorism police officer killed during the attacks, said she was relieved by Mr. Kasab’s confession. “We should really hang him publicly,” she told the NDTV news network. “That’s what I feel.”

Lydia Polgreen contributed reporting.