Ujjwal Nikam

Mumbai, May 4: Public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam today vigorously advocated the death penalty for Ajmal Kasab, at one point referring to the terrorist as a “mad dog”, at another invoking Hamlet and exhausting the synonyms for “demon”.

Kasab will know his fate on Thursday, May 6.

In an impassioned speech dotted with Sanskrit shlokas and Marathi proverbs, Nikam said: “If the court does not award him the death penalty, society will rush to its door seeking to relieve this snake in human form of every drop of his poisonous blood.

“Death penalty is a lesser punishment for a beast like him — and I feel like Hamlet posed with an existential question as I cannot ask for what is not prescribed in law. His crime is more heinous...than (a case of) silent death by hanging. But the dignity of law has to be maintained. So death penalty is what I seek for Kasab,” Nikam told the court.

Nikam had begun his arguments saying that the moot question surrounding Kasab’s conviction was whether he should get the maximum sentence of death penalty or the minimum punishment of a life term.

“I opt for maximum penalty and my submission is not based on any sense of revenge in the tooth for tooth and nail for nail tradition — we are a country with 4,000 years of civilisation behind us and we do not seek barbaric revenge, however heinous the crime. But in this case, death is the right penalty as per the provisions of jurisprudence, Indian law and earlier Supreme Court judgments,” Nikam said.

For two hours, Nikam put forth his arguments on why Kasab should be sent to the gallows.

“This is a rarest of rare case — an exceptional circumstance — the number of people killed is not the criteria for which I am seeking death penalty. The mode or manner of the murders has a greater bearing than the number of people killed while awarding death,” Nikam said, pointing a finger at Kasab.

Kasab, who sat motionless with one hand on his cheek and eyes closed almost the entire time, did not change his stance.

Judge M.L. Tahaliyani looked at Kasab for a few moments and, in an unusual move, asked policemen guarding the terrorist to move away from the line of vision of journalists present in court. Kasab was asked to shift to the centre of the bench.

Nikam then broke into Marathi, continuing his arguments in the same vein.

If Kasab — he had picked up Marathi in jail — understood that Nikam was calling him a “demon” and a “butcher”, he did not show any sign of comprehension.

Nikam also reminded the court of accepted eye-witness accounts as well as photographs which revealed that Kasab was in joyous rapture as he merrily went about shooting people in Mumbai.

Nikam then turned to Kasab, sitting still and quiet, and said in Marathi that he should be sentenced to death by hanging because “his crimes were heinous”, “he was remorseless” and he “relished killing people”.

“He is a killing machine. And such machines are manufactured in Pakistan. He is a person with “beast (sic) tendencies … He is a disgrace to the human race. He is a shaitan and a rakshasha... he is an agent of devil himself,” said a charged-up Nikam and proceeded to make his final appeal for the death penalty.

Kasab continued to sit still.