26/11 Mumbai attack was ‘pre-meditated’, prosecutors tell Indian SC

Say a diary with Urdu contents and telephone intercepts prove the assault was ‘pre-planned and pre-arranged’.

Evidence in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks case clearly shows that it was a “pre-meditated” assault and that the attackers were being guided by handlers from Pakistan, the Indian Supreme Court was told on Thursday.

Indian newspaper Hindustan Times reported that in Thursday’s hearing, the prosecution said that a diary with contents in Urdu and intercepts of telephonic conversations between the terrorists and their handlers establish that the attack was “pre-planned and pre-arranged”.

“From the diary and intercepts [...], three things are clear that the attack in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, was pre-meditated involving ten terrorists who were from Pakistan,” former solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam and special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told a bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice CK Prasad.

Subramaniam, the Maharashtra government counsel, said that the according to the diary, which was recovered from the boat, Kuber, used by the terrorists to reach Mumbai, they had come together and upon reaching the city, they separated into five groups with specific targets.

“This diary clearly proves that the ten terrorists had come as a group and attacked Mumbai. They were from Pakistan. It was a pre-planned and pre-arranged attack as after reaching Budhawar Park they divided themselves into five groups and attacked their respective targets,” Subramaniam said, while seeking the apex court’s endorsement of the death sentence that has been handed down to 24-year-old Ajmal Kasab, the sole convict and surviving attacker from the attack.