Ajmal Kasab's journey from Faridkot to gallows of Yerwada

21 November, 2012

Pakistani gunman and one of the key attackers in the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai, Ajmal Kasab has finally been hanged at Yerwada Jail in Pune after his mercy plea was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee.

IT IS shocking to look at the life of gun-toting Pakistani youth from the Faridkot village to a high security cell in Mumbai's Arthur Road jail and eventually to the gallows of Yerwada Jail in Pune.

Ajmal Kasab was born on 13th September 1987 at Faridkot village in Dipalpur tehsil of Okara district in Punjab, Pakistan, according to this NNIS video. Kasab has one elder sister, Rukaiya Husain and one elder brother Afzal. His father is a bhelpuri vendor, while his brother works as a labourer in Lahore.

Kasab was a school dropout and the reason behind it was poverty. He fought with his parents and left home in 2005. He first started his career with small criminal jobs and then to robberies. He accidentally met the activists of LeT and joined Lashkar-e-Toiba after being inspired by the speech of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the Lashkar chief. He had the training of Marine warfare technique at a remote camp in Muzaffrabad, a part of Pakistani Kashmir. He was among the ten people who would go on to carry out the 2008 Mumbai attack, which killed 166 people.

While Kasab was captured alive, all his other accomplices were killed in the attack. The trial which had sentenced to death the 25-year-old on 6th May 2010, which was later unveiled by Bombay High Court last year. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence and his mercy petition was eventually rejected by the president.