Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist luckily caught alive while Mumbai’s couple of icon hotels and a residential hub of Jewish community was under attack by Pakistani jihadi organization seventeen months back, likely to be awarded death sentence.
For the first time in India, police could link Kasab directly to the ghastly crimes includes killing spree in most crowded railway station of the world. Special Judge Tahaliyani heard Kasab and about 300 witnesses during marathon trial of 211 days. He also went through the heap of evidence supplied by forensic agencies. This time Mumbai police had the rare success. They could establish conspiracy case against the attackers. With the loss of its top officers, now Mumbai police had a measurable amount of success in 26/11/ attack case that they could never had in serial bomb blasts case of 1993 despite best the assistance then by prosecutors Mr. Ujjwal Nikam. Though 26/11 attackers belonged to Pakistan, all of them could not be tried, because except Kasab, nobody survived during counter attack by commandos.
Kasab, a boyish looking young terrorist trained in Pakistan, contradicted himself many times during the trial. He, held guilty, was facing 86 charges. The conspiracy hatched in Pakistan was also established during the trial. This is most important aspect of the Kasab trial. The verdict in this Kasab trial would go long way to help India who has been working hard to bring the facts about Pakistani sponsored terrorism. In India law and order is state subject meaning that onus lies upon state governments to investigate the crimes and subsequent prosecutions as per the VII schedule to the Constitution of India. According to constitution, the states are competent to raise police force as per their law & order, internal security and other requirements.
Although central government has been supplementing the efforts of state governments in modernizing their police forces in terms of infrastructure, to meet challenges to internal security, it is clear that neither the central government nor the state governments are able to prevent the terrorist attacks or effectively investigate the major attacks in country including the one on parliament house. Between 1989 and 1993, terrorism in J&K was mainly due to the activities of indigenous Kashmiri organizations. When they were unable to succeed, the ISI started infiltrating trained jihad cadres of the Pakistani pan-Islamic organizations, who had fought against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s, into J&K for beefing up indigenous organizations. Since 1999, the Pakistani jihad organizations have taken over the leadership of the anti-government of India movement.
India has a little over 140 million Muslims -- the second largest Muslim community in the world after Indonesia. Only a very small section of the community has taken to terrorism due to various grievances and instigation by the ISI and Pakistan's religious, fundamentalist and jihad organizations. The overwhelming majority of Indian Muslims are loyal, law-abiding citizens. They have not allowed their anger against the Indian government or the Hindus for any reason to drive them into the arms of terrorist organizations. India has the most modern, peaceful and forward-looking Muslim community in the world. There are hundreds of Muslims from various parts of the world undergoing jihad training in madras all over Pakistan. However, there are no reports of any Indian Muslims studying there. Osama bin Laden's IIF has 13 member-organizations from different parts of the world -- five of them are from Pakistan. Not a single Indian Muslim organization. When the US started its air strikes on Al Qaeda and the Taliban training camps in Afghan territory on October 7, 2001, there were demonstrations by Muslims in many parts of the world. There was hardly any demonstration in India.
Although the Mumbai court verdict is solid example of India’s ability to deal with crime, it is not sufficient. India will have to go providing military help to its own states. India will have to fight all sorts of wars to stop the terrorist started war in various states. This war can be fought like any other war that militaries around the world often fight. Earlier in many parts of the world, the Indian military served as peacekeeping force. Now it may need to serve itself: to fight war for maintaining law and order.
-Ramesh Zawar
Senior Journalist
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