The Terrified Terrorist

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab- The name that terrorised the nation four years ago and continued to do so till he was hanged at the Pune Central Jail on 21^st November, 2012. Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab which literally means ‘The most handsome prince’ was nothing but a petty thief in the town of Faridkot, Pakistan before the members of the political wing of the ‘Army of the righteous’ (Lashkar-e-Taiba) persuaded him to join the terrorist organisation ‘to free the fellow Muslims from the atrocities they go through worldwide’. And thus the Ajmal Kasab was born who mercilessly killed hundreds of people on 26/11/2008 in Mumbai. The lone terrorist captured alive was hanged pretty unceremoniously on 21/11/2012 which left many aggrieved and agitated citizens disappointed. The judiciary system took four long years to pass the final judgement of executing Ajmal Kasab after he was captured alive from the streets of Mumbai with automatic weapons, explosives, GPS devices and mobile phone. The CCTV footage confirmed Ajmal Kasab firing at innocents mercilessly and still the law took its own course and spent four years in reviewing and rechecking all the evidence and taking statements from the witnesses and the terrorist himself.

India was furious with the delay in the execution of its biggest villain. Ajmal Kasab had earned the widespread hatred he was receiving. And personally I think he must have been getting a kick from all this. After all he was trained and preached to hate Indians, to dislike and distrust every Indian move, and to get the whole nation in hating him for his heinous activities must have been giving him a satisfaction which even killing all those innocent people might not have given him. Ajmal Kasab was a terrorist who had lost all human emotions, who had been brainwashed of achieving paradise by his terror acts. Ajmal Kasab was a living example of the by-products which radical terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba are capable of producing. Ajmal Kasab had no remorse or regret for his actions and the long wait of four years to meet his maker must have made him rethink entirely what he had been taught. The sluggish pace with which our judiciary system worked must have proved to be crueler for Ajmal Kasab than any other quick execution might have been. The four years in prison had developed hope in Ajmal Kasab. Hope is the biggest weapon one has, but in this case the hope which was developing in Kasab proved to be a weapon for the families of all the people who had lost their lives on 26/11/2008. A man without hope is like a body without its soul. You cannot kill a body which has no soul. If Ajmal Kasab had been executed just after his capture he would have been happy to die, because that is what he was sent to do- kill and die- and then achieve the paradise he was promised by all the “holy men” of Lashkar-e-Taiba.  Keeping him alive for four years in prison changed his mind-set, otherwise why would a terrorist sent on a suicide mission apply for a mercy plea! Executing a man who had been trained and brainwashed to die would have not brought the satisfaction to a bleeding country. Watching him plead for mercy before the Indian judges and President calmed me. This was the right end for a terrorist like Ajmal Kasab. The unceremonious hanging was also a perfect end. The nation should not celebrate this moment, but strengthen itself to counter any such attacks on its soil in the future. Celebrating someone’s end makes us no different than those radical groups which had trained Ajmal Kasab and brainwashed him into going on a killing spree. We are a peace loving nation and should always remain so. It’s better to change the world by love rather than changing it by wars.

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” ~Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi