Abbas Kazmi outside the court in Mumbai on Thursday. (AFP)

Mumbai, April 16: The judge trying the 26/11 suspects today appointed a new lawyer to defend the lone captured gunman, a day after he dismissed the previous counsel because of a conflict of interest.

Special court judge M.L. Tahilyani asked Abbas Kazmi, who had represented some two dozen 1993 Mumbai blast accused, to take up Ajmal Kasab’s case after the 54-year-old agreed to defend the Pakistani national.

“He is your lawyer,” the judge told Kasab, who appeared relaxed and smiled at Kazmi.

Yesterday, the first day of the trial, Tahilyani had barred Anjali Waghmare, appointed by the Maharashtra legal aid cell, from defending Kasab for not disclosing that she had already accepted a brief from a November 26 witness.

“I feel you should have disclosed to the court that you had already been appointed by the legal aid cell to appear for the witness,” the judge told Waghmare at the specially built court in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail, where Kasab is being held.

The second day’s proceedings began with special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam informing the court that Mumbai police had faxed Kasab’s request for a Pakistani lawyer to Pakistani authorities through the ministry of external affairs but had got no response.

The court then asked Kazmi, who has a private practice, if he would take up the case. After he agreed, the judge assured him the Maharashtra government would pay him more than the Rs 900 that lawyers on the state’s legal aid panel get for the entire duration of a trial.

In Islamabad, a Pakistani official said the foreign office had not received anything officially from India regarding Kasab’s request for a lawyer. “We will see when it comes,” PTI quoted foreign office spokesperson Abdul Basit as saying.

Tahilyani asked K.P. Pawar, who had been appointed along with Waghmare to defend Kasab, to assist Kazmi, and directed that Kazmi be given a copy of the 11,825-page chargesheet.

Kazmi, who has over 20 years of experience as a lawyer, represented some 25 suspects among the 123 tried in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case. One of those he appeared for in the case was D-company gangster Ejaz Pathan. He also defended three suspects in the murder of T-Series owner Gulshan Kumar.

The veteran lawyer completed his degree from K.C. College in 1980, and had then moved to Saudi Arabia where he worked as financial adviser for 13 years with an international hospital group.

He returned to Mumbai and began practising around the time the trial in the 1993 blast case started.

At today’s proceedings, public prosecutor Nikam gave a preliminary introduction on the seven cases in which Kasab is a direct accused and added that he was a co-conspirator in five other.

He said Kasab should be tried for the murders of all the 166 people who died during the four-day siege and told the court the conspiracy for the attack was hatched in Pakistan and involved 35 Pakistani nationals.

The prosecution, he said, would rely on 756 articles seized from the accused and the sites targeted, 1,350 documents and 1,820 witnesses to prove its case. “Certain foreign forensic experts will also be examined during the trial. Their identities and addresses should be protected by the court,” Nikam said.

The foreign experts are likely to be officials of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation who conducted a parallel investigation and assisted Mumbai police in gathering evidence.

Outside the court, Kazmi said Kasab, “going by how he giggled in court”, may not have “understood the gravity” of the offence and the charges against him. “Personally I condemn the terror attacks, but I will decide on the defence strategy only after reading the chargesheet,” he told reporters.