Kasab! The face of TERROR by Juhi Meshram

It was during the night when I was carried out of my cell. It was my special cell. Yes, because it was built for me. I was living there for almost four years. It hardly looked like a jail but the feeling was the same. I was trapped. Steel walls, cameras and tunnel to the special court for trials. They had brought the court to jail for me so they could keep me secured, and alive. “Get up, you are being shifted to Pune jail.”, the policeman told me while handcuffing me and I laughed. While I was walking out the cell I got remembrance of the time I was brought here, from a hospital.

Name. Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab.

Nationality. Pakistan.

Village. Faridkot, Okara District of Punjab, Pakistan.

Which group. Lashkar-e-Taiba.

I told my identity, I claimed my deeds, because we were told to do so and I was proud. And they had brought me to this jail. And then they had built this cell for me. I was proud at what I had done for my people, for Allah.

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I had sensed something big was to come next. In last four years, they had not risked to take me out. And that night, suddenly I was out of that cell and was then sitting in a vehicle. There were other vehicles following us. It was cold and I was struck by anticipations. I was struck by memories. I was struck by guilt. The journey to another jail landed me in the past. The time I had first got those handcuffs locked into my hands.

It was near the ocean. Ismail was driving and I was sitting next to him when we encountered Indian police. They were so many. There were barricades. We couldn’t move ahead. Ismail took a U-turn but then police started firing and we just could not escape. Ismail was dead. But I waited for them to come close. I acted being motionless. They pulled the door and I triggered my AK-47. I didn’t know who he was, the policeman. But I penetrated bullets inside him. And in no time, I was weapon less and they were beating me really bad.

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We reached another jail. I was medically examined and then put into another cell. Once again, I was left alone. The day proceeded. I was not comfortable. This place was new and I had sensed something big to come next. It was sometime in the evening that someone from the authorities came and told me, “you will be executed tomorrow morning. 7:30.”  

Last wish. I want my mother to be informed.

And he left. It was the evening before my last day; I was alone. And I was deep down in guilt. The interrogations, trials and self-realizations had changed a whole part of me. I was not proud, I was guilty. I was guilty for what I had done, four years ago.

I had killed so many people. I had killed a mob. The people were innocent; they were common people of this country. There were adults, children, and old aged. I had entered illegally to India with my group, had carried explosives along me, and had a purpose of killing, asking for our demands to be fulfilled. I was told Indians were bad, how they tortured Muslims, what they had done to us and our community in past. I was told to be on the way to Jihad. It was a brain wash. And I had committed a crime way beyond forgiveness.

I had studied up to forth standard. I had chosen a way of looting people. And soon I joined Lashkar. A very small step towards crime had brought me here. Away from my family and nation, to this country, to this land. I ended up killing humanity, terrifying a nation and causing my own death.

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I did not sleep. I could not. In the morning, people came and examined me again. I was “fit to be hanged”, they said, “We tried communicating Pakistan authorities but failed, your mother could not be informed.” This was it. My last wish could not be completed. This was my punishment. Allah chose it for me, to die disowned.

Any other last wish. No.

you want your belongings to be given to anybody. No.

I was tied, my head was covered and I got panicked. I was suddenly talking so much. My death was facing me, I knew by movements. I chose my last communication with the one I had disappointed the most, “Allah kasam, maaf kar do. Chhod do, aisi galti dobara nahin hogi.”