I’ve never seen Hafeez Saeed: Kasab

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the sole surviving 26/11 attacker, on Tuesday disputed contents of his confessional statement saying the first time he heard names like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jamat-ud-Dawa, he was in Mumbai police’s custody, reports HT Correspondent.

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the sole surviving 26/11 attacker, on Tuesday disputed contents of his confessional statement saying the first time he heard names like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jamat-ud-Dawa, he was in Mumbai police’s custody.

HT Image

The LeT has been accused of engineering the terror attacks.

“Police showed me some photographs published in newspapers saying they were of Hafeez Mohammed Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi,” said Kasab while replying to queries from special judge M L Tahaliyani. “Sir maine unko kabhi nahi dekha (I have never seen them),” he added.

The Pakistani national denied all contents of the statement, saying it was a story concocted by Mumbai police.

Disputing the genuineness of the statement, he said that the statement produced in the special court wasn’t the one recorded by Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate R V Sawant-Waghule. “Dhokese signature liya gaya, kehke ki baad mein padhake sunayenge. Lekin kabhi padhke sunayahi nahi (They asked me to sign saying that they will read it out to me later, but they never read it out),” said Kasab.

“I have never seen these things,” he said when the special court asked him about his last training involving an AK-47 rifle, hand grenades and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED). “I was busy earning livelihood, why would I go there?”

Kasab claimed he was working as a cook at a tent house in Sarai Alamgir, a small town near Jhelam on the Pakistani side of Punjab during the period, in which he is stated to have undergone training at LeT camps. He said that the court could cross check the facts with the tent house’s owner.

Kasab alleged a senior crime branch officer threatened him with electric shocks to record his confessions.