The Supreme Court on Thursday watched the CCTV footage of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, collected by the Maharashtra police’s Anti-Terror Squad from different locations to convince the top court to sustain the death penalty to Pakistan terrorist Ajmal Kasab.
Besides, a bench of Justices Aftab Alam and C.K. Prasad wanted to understand the enormity of the crime and the involvement of the terrorists based in Pakistan, who were giving minute-by-minute instructions to about killing people, setting the venues on fire, especially the Taj hotel and causing maximum damage to properties by using explosives and hurling grenades.
The CCTV footage were viewed by the judges in their chambers and what was their reaction to it, would only be know when it would be discussed in the argument by state’s counsel Gopal Subramaniam.
He made the arrangement to view the CCTV footage after the judges on Wednesday had heard the elaborate transcript of telephonic conversation between the ten terrorists, who were on the killing spree and their handlers in Pakistan, which the judges described as “sickening”.
Mr Subramaniam had submitted after reading out the transcript that the visuals were far more disturbing as it showed that the terrorists were acting in “barbaric” way having no respect for human lives and their handlers were asking them to be more crude.
They were being asked to set on fire every room, break the doors with hammer and drive people out and use them as shield against security forces and when require kill them with impunity, throw grenades on advancing army personnel, use explosive to blow the hotel rooms if they find the doors hard to break.