Kasab claims to be brainwashed like a robot

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Ajmal Kasab facing death penalty for the 2008 Mumbai terror attack claimed in the Supreme Court that he was brainwashed like a robot. He added that he had been committed the heinous crime in the name of God and that he does not deserve punishment owing to his young age.
In his special leave petition challenging the death penalty, Kasab through Counsel Gaurav Agrawal claimed that he was innocent and his so-called confessional statement had no evidentiary value as there was no corroboration.
The 24-year-old lone surviving gunman from the Mumbai carnage which left 166 people dead submitted that he had retracted the disclosure statements, but the same was relied upon by the trial court and the high court for handing down the death penalty.
“He was acting like a robot having been made to believe that he was acting in the name of God when he was allegedly told to commit the aforesaid offences,” the appeal said.
The petition claimed that the high court which confirmed the death penalty did not consider the fact that at the time of the crime Kasab was only 21 years which should have been considered as a mitigating factor for not awarding him death penalty.
“For that the high court ought to have held that the petitioner was barely 21 years of age and being of impressionable mind has failed to see the difference between right and wrong, he therefore, did not deserve the death penalty,” the petition added.
It stated further, “It is respectfully submitted that even apart from the petitioner’s age, the prosecution’s own case reveals that the petitioner is from an economically deprived section of society, that he left school at a young age and also ran way from home following a fight with his father.”
“His mental and moral faculties are not fully developed at such a young age and hence it cannot be asserted that the possibility for reformation is non-existent and that the alternative to the death penalty is foreclosed,” the petition said.

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