The verdict was never any real surprise, and if the sentence, expected perhaps later this week, is any less than the death penalty, the Indian government will face a considerable outpouring of nationalistic anger. Channel 4 News Asia Correspondent Nick Paton Walsh reports.
It’s hard to imagine how the case against the sole surviving Mumbai gunman, Ajmal Kasab, could have been any more watertight. He is the man in the almost-iconic image of the brutal attacks – the still picture of a young man in blue in the CST railway terminus toting an AK47 with a backpack carrying the rest of his destructive wares.
He was caught at the scene. He confessed (then retracted his confession, despite a lot of it having been broadcast on video by Channel Four’s Dispatches).
The court heard over 650 witnesses and received an 11,000 page case from the prosecution. Emotionally, the Indian press is brimming with the victims: the mother of a boy shot for giving Kasab a glass of water; the parent of a girl shot in the leg by him at the railway station. None of them able to understand why he has been awarded due legal process before his inevitable hanging.
But for many Indians, it is in fact Pakistan that is on trial today.
The fury remains strong that the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group the Indian and US governments accuse of running the attacks, was allowed to function inside Pakistan, and that the attackers were allowed to launch their ship from the port of Karachi.
Pakistan has arrested many of the 38 other people accused of involvement in the attacks who are on their soil. But the alleged spiritual ringleader – Hafiz Saeed – who runs the Jamat u Dawah charitable group and says he is entirely innocent of any involvement in the attack, is still under mere house arrest in Pakistan.
India and Pakistan have recently had key peace talks – the first in ages – and while this speedy trial has helped sweep the incident under the carpet, loathing remains strong.
Today’s verdict comes amid heightened security in Delhi, where at the weekend the US Embassy issued a new terror alert.
This verdict may perhaps not prove a helpful way of sweeping this violent episode in Pakistani-Indian relations under the carpet, but instead simply prove an unwelcome reminder to everyone about the brutality of the attacks in which 166 unarmed hotel guests and staff were shot down.