26/11 attack: SC to hear intercepted talks

The Supreme Court will hear the intercepted conversation between the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack perpetrators and their Pakistani handlers on Thursday. The conversation was recorded during the 2008 carnage in which 166 persons were killed.

The Supreme Court will hear the intercepted conversation between the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack perpetrators and their Pakistani handlers on Thursday. The conversation was recorded during the 2008 carnage in which 166 persons were killed.

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A bench of justice Aftab Alam and justice CK Prasad told former solicitor general and Maharashtra state counsel Gopal Subramanium that they would hear the conversation at 2pm.

The bench is hearing sole surviving terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab’s appeal challenging the Bombay high court verdict that held him guilty for the attack. He has requested the apex court to commute his sentence to life imprisonment.

Subramanium, however, argued that the conversation between the 10 terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan established that the terror attack in Mumbai was “pre-planned, pre-arranged and pre-meditated”.

He referred to certain portions of the conversation including the one in which the Pakistani handlers asked Kasab and his team as to why they didn’t sink MV Kuber — the boat they used to come to Mumbai.

In one of the conversations, the handler was seeking a confirmation of whether Kuber’s navigator was killed. “The navigator was beheaded by Kasab,” Subramanium told the bench.