It’s almost four years to the day when Ajmal Amir Kasab went from being a nobody to front page headlines across the world. He was the only terrorist to be captured alive from the team of Lashkar-e-Taiba militants who torched Mumbai.
Though the ghosts of the 26/11 attacks have almost been put to rest, Kasab’s hanging on Wednesday drew quite a lot of emotional, impassioned, even violent response, from several people in the city. Leading up to his hanging, Kasab became the involuntary case study for a long-raging debate about whether the death penalty was in or out.
Though courts in the country have been somewhat conservative in enforcing the death penalty, in Kasab’s case, it did come about surely and quietly. As soon as prison authorities in the Yerwada Jail in Pune pronounced him dead, there was an overkill of impassioned declarations of morbid happiness across social networking sites.
City Express spoke to a few people who felt strongly about the late Kasab - both for and against his eventual hanging.
S Vaidyanathan- Software Professional
Kasab was a criminal who murdered innocent people. The evidence was clear and he should have been hanged earlier. I feel this was done just for the sake of doing it, as it has been more than four years since he was arrested.
Anand Sarathi- Software Professional
We are three years late. It is only in India that even when you have the video of someone committing a murder does his lawyer argue that the person is not the accused.
Thangam Raghunath- Homemaker
He should have been hanged in public. Then there would have been some solace for the families who lost their loved ones. He was a young boy, but he was a terrorist. He deserved to be hanged.
Sai Gokul- Film Director
Justice is never denied, it is only delayed. My heart goes out to the families of those who lost their loved ones in the attacks, and also to Kasab’s mother. At least now, let there be peace.
Divya Sridharan- Lawyer
Ajmal Kasab’s death is a delayed justice to every Indian who was thrown to shock on 26/11. Though the Supreme Court mandated that death penalty should be imposed only in the rarest of rare cases, Kasab was definitely not the rarest one. This is definitely a delayed rejoice to all.
Khalida Nihal- Software Engineer
I am sad that he is dying this late! I expected that dengue would at least kill him before the government took action. It’s also disappointing that even though there was proof of his killing people, it took the government so much time to give justice to the victims and their families.