Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving Pakistani gunman captured during the terror attacks in the western Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people and injured 300 others nearly four years ago, was hanged to death on Wednesday.
Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil said at a news conference that doctors declared Kasab dead soon after he was hanged at 7.30 am local time at Pune's Yerwada Jail. The state Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan told reporters later that he was buried inside the jail premises at 9.30 am.
Considering security risks involved in the highly sensitive case, the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist was shifted two days ago from Mumbai's Arthur Road Jail with utmost secrecy to the Yerwada Central Jail after his mercy petition was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee earlier this month.
Kasab's execution, the first capital punishment in India since 2004, is a tribute to the victims of 26/11 attacks, Patil told reporters.
Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who during trial accused the Pakistani government of sponsoring the terrorist attack and the Pakistani Army of involving in it, said he is happy for the hanging. He termed it as a victory for India, which is sending a message that terrorism will not be tolerated.
Indian Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who had signed Kasab's execution order on November 7, said Indian mission in Islamabad has informed the Pak government of Kasab's execution, and that New Delhi has not yet received any request from Islamabad to claim the Pak citizen's body.
Chavan said that the Indian government tried to reach to the members of Kasab's family, based in Faridkot in Pakistan's eastern province of Punjab, in vein.
The prolonged and complex procedures culminating in Kasab's execution comes just five days before the fourth anniversary of the brutal terror attacks, one of the deadliest attacks once on India.
Kasab, who along with an accomplice shot dead 52 people at the Mumbai CST Railway Station, was arrested on November 26, 2008 at Girgaum Chowpatty in South Mumbai.
The image of the 25-year-old Pak militant on a killing spree in one of the country's main and busiest railway stations was caught on camera, showing the slight figure in combat trousers and a sweatshirt clutching an assault rifle and carrying a backpack.
India's anti-terrorist commandos killed all the other nine gunmen who carried out multiple-location attacks in the country's financial capital and held hostages for three days. Victims of the attack included foreigners.
On May 6, 2010, a special court handling the case had sentenced the cadre of the Pakistan-based militant outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) to death on charges including terrorism, mass murder, and waging war against India.
The Mumbai High Court upheld the death sentence on February 21, 2011. The Supreme Court rejected Kasab's appeal against the verdict in August this year.
During his meeting with his Indian counterpart Palaniyappan Chidambaram in Maldives on the sidelines of the SAARC Summit in November last, Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik had said Kasab was a terrorist and that he should be sent to the gallows.
India had long been pressing the Pak government to bring the Pakistan-based perpetrators of the Mumbai terror strike to justice. Pakistan's lackadaisical approach raised tensions between the two nuclear-armed South Asian countries, which have fought three wars.
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