Ajmal Kasab, aides planned to return to Karachi, SC told

The Supreme Court was Thursday told that the 2008 Mumbai terror attack convict and Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab and his nine associates had planned to return to Karachi by the sea route after the carnage.

Senior counsel Gopal subramanium, appearing for the Maharashtra government, told the apex court bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice C.K. Prasad that the “GPS (global positioning system) was an important device for 26/11 terrorists to reach Mumbai and there was record of their return journey from Mumbai to Karachi” also.

The court was hearing Kasab’s plea challenging the upholding of his conviction and award of death penalty.

Referring to the mapping of data retrieved from four GPS units, recovered one each from a hijacked ship M.B. Kuber and Hotel Taj and two from Nariman Point, Subramanium told the court that “we have the record of time, period, course and position” of their ship during their journey from Karachi to Mumbai.

Subramanium told the court that the record retrieved from the GPS units used by the terrorists were independently confirmed by marine experts by plotting those positions.

Senior counsel told the court that he was pointing all these details just to show that they came from Karachi to attack Mumbai.

When the court inquired in what way the GPS installed on automobiles was different from the one used by the Mumbai attackers, Subramanium told the court that “it is almost the same but is a different version”.

He told the court that “in modern ships it is very advanced. It will tell you the latitude and longitude position of a ship on the sea that is 15 km away. It would steer the ship according to the course fed into the GPS.”

Subramanium said this to the court in the course of the hearing of Kasab’s plea challenging the upholding of his conviction and award of death penalty by the high court.

Kasab was convicted and awarded death sentence by a Mumbai trial court May 6, 2010. Besides other charges, he was convicted for waging war against India. The Bombay High Court upheld the verdict Feb 21, 2011.

He was convicted and awarded death sentence for waging war against India.

Subramanium earlier told the court that it was a well “thought out operation that was planned over the years and preparations for which were made at multiple places”.

He described as “primitive and cruel” the brutalities with which the attackers had killed people including Amar Chand Solanki – the navigator of hijacked ship M.B. Kuber.