Rana was acquitted by a Chicago court on the charges of abetting the Mumbai attacks but was convicted for providing material support to LeT and helping a terror plot in Denmark.
A US court's acquittal of Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana on charges of abetting the Mumbai terror attacks would not effect the legal proceedings against terrorist Ajmal Kasab, special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam today said.
"However, it pains me to hear how Rana was exonerated from criminal conspiracy of 26/11 terror attack particularly when co-accused David Headley's evidence about complicity of both of them in the conspiracy has been accepted by the court," Nikam said here, reacting to the verdict.
Rana was acquitted by a Chicago court on the charges of abetting the Mumbai attacks but was convicted for providing material support to LeT and helping a terror plot in Denmark.
Nikam said the legal proceedings against 26/11 convict Kasab, who has been held guilty of participating in the terror attacks by the Bombay high court, will not be affected by Rana's verdict.
"The law of conspiracy in USA, UK, India and Pakistan is very clear to the effect that once a conspiracy is hatched and participants have been involved in that, then it is not necessary that conspirators should do overt acts as conspiracy itself is a punishable offence," Nikam, who was prosecutor in the Mumbai court which conducted the 26/11 trial, said.
When the Chicago Court accepted Headley's evidence that he and Rana had hatched a criminal conspiracy with LeT, then the acquittal of Rana from the 26/11 terror attacks is itself contradictory, he said.
"Once the Chicago court accepted the theory of conspiracy about the involvement of Rana and Headley in plotting various terrorist acts then the court ought to have held Rana guilty of 26/11 terror attacks," Nikam said.
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