Investigators say their acquittal will weaken the case against Lakhvi and others in Pakistan.
Kasab’s death sentence was a foregone conclusion. His footage with a rucksack and a gun, flashed across TV channels, was in itself his death warrant. The complicated part was the acquittal of Kasab’s alleged facilitators, Faheem Ahmed Ansari and Mohammad Sabauddin Ahmed.
Special judge ML Tahaliyani acquitted the duo for lack of evidence and on the ground that a hand-drawn map allegedly supplied to Kasab was an insufficient piece of evidence to pronounce somebody guilty since “there are better maps available on Google”. The charges against the duo are however not just restricted to the 26/11 carnage. They have been accused of assisting in two other LeT strikes: the January 1, 2008, attack on a CRPF centre in Rampur and the attack on the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore attack on December 29, 2005.
UP police claim they have a watertight case against them in the Rampur case that is pending trial in UP. The trial will start once they are brought back from Mumbai, where they are currently in judicial custody. The two had been picked up by the UP police Special Task Force along with four others in February 2008. While Faheem was arrested in Rampur, Sabauddin was picked at a tempo stand near Charbagh railway station in Lucknow.
A senior police official connected with the 26/11 probe said the acquittal of the duo may have weakened India’s case against terrorists in Pakistan, where several arrests, including that of Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, had been made partly on the basis of disclosures made by Faheem and Sabauddin. Lakhvi and other co-accused had been charged with masterminding the Mumbai carnage and providing training and maps to the terrorists who finally carried out the strike. These maps, found on Kasab, had allegedly been supplied to LeT by Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin.
“The judgment could weaken the case against Lakhvi and others in Pakistan. The acquittal is a very strong excuse for Pakistan to let the arrested accused go,” said a senior Mumbai investigator.
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