Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, 22, was found guilty on almost all of the 86 charges he faced over the 10-man assault on three luxury hotels, a restaurant, Jewish centre and the main Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) station.
“You have been found guilty of waging war against India and killing people at CST, killing government officials and abetting the other nine terrorists,” judge M.L. Tahaliyani told Kasab in Hindi.
The judge said Kasab had been trained in Pakistan to fight a ‘war’ against India and had been directly or jointly responsible for the deaths of 52 people in the train station — the bloodiest episode of the onslaught.
Kasab, in a long white kurta, stood impassively in the dock as the judge took nearly three hours to go through a summary of the 1,522-page verdict in English.
A hearing to decide on sentence is set for Tuesday, with Kasab facing the death penalty for the murder and waging war convictions.
Indian nationals Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed, accused of providing logistical support to the gunmen by supplying them with handmade maps of the city, were found not guilty in a major rebuff to the prosecution.
Ahmed’s lawyer, Ejaz Naqvi, said outside the court that they had been ‘framed’ by police and blamed a US-Pakistani national, David Coleman Headley, for scouting out targets for the attacks.
Headley admitted identifying targets and providing intelligence to the gunmen earlier this year.
He is in US custody but Mr Tahaliyani rejected an application for him to give evidence at the trial.
Kasab, a school dropout, was captured in a photograph walking through Mumbai’s train station wearing a backpack and carrying an AK-47 in what has become one of the defining images of the attacks.
The former labourer from Pakistan’s Punjab province initially denied the charges, then pleaded guilty, before reverting to his original stance and claiming that he was set up by the police.
“You got training in Pakistan,” the judge told Kasab on Monday. “All of this has been proven against you.”
The case was also ‘proven’ against LeT founder Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, key operative Zarar Shah and Hafiz Saeed, whose Jamaatud Dawa charity is widely seen as a front for LeT.
Lakhvi and Shah are among seven suspects currently on trial in Rawalpindi.
“The judgment itself is a message to Pakistan that they should not export terror to India,” Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters after the conviction, adding that the process had been a triumph for the country’s legal system.
“If they do, and we apprehend the terrorists, we will be able to bring them to justice and give them exemplary punishment
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