Mumbai: Another book on the lone captured terrorist, Ajmal Kasab, was released yesterday and it got the thumbs up from none other than Ujwal Nikam, the special prosecutor in the trial that saw the Pakistani gunman sentenced to death.
Nikam describes Rommel Rodrigues' book, Kasab: The Face of 26/11, as "informative and interesting. The writer has impressively applied logical deductions to come up with logical conclusions".
"However, the author has also cleverly used his imagination to vividly tell what happened at the Karachi control room where the conspirators were issuing orders to the 10 terrorists during their Mumbai attacks. Knowing the facts, I think this is what must have happened there. I appreciate his imagination."
Largely truthful account
Nikam, who said he was privy to far more information than what is publicly known, said the writer had stuck to the truth, with the exception that he was not sure whether the Mumbai police headquarters was another target for the terrorists. "As far as I know from Kasab's confession and other evidence, the terrorists had [the] goal of killing as many people as they could."
Asked whether Kasab was merely a pawn, Nikam said: "Kasab was extremely cunning as well as intelligent. He was a well-trained hardcore terrorist. I don't think anyone should have sympathy for him."
He said he didn't want to call him a "jihadi because it has a certain meaning in the Quran and I don't want to insult that terminology."
Rodrigues said he wanted to give a new untold angle to the story since most of the books published on Kasab so far were compilations of news stories.
"I wanted to tell what happens in Pakistan and several of my journalist friends in that country helped me with information," he said.
"And facts were verified and confirmed at every stage."
He also added that the book has received a good response in Pakistan.
