New Delhi:
The Home Ministry has recommended that President Pranab Mukherjee reject the mercy petition of Ajaml Kasab, the only terrorist caught alive during the 26/11 attacks in which 166 people were killed in Mumbai.
The President will now have to decide whether to commute Kasab's death sentence to life imprisonment.
Kasab, who is kept in a bulletproof cell in a Mumbai's Arthur Road jail, was sentenced to death by the Bombay High Court in October last year; he was convicted on charges ranging from treason to waging war against India. He appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled against him in August.
Kasab's mercy petition was filed first with the Maharashtra Home Ministry, which rejected it last month, and forwarded it to the Union Home Ministry.
In 2008, ten young men from Pakistan sailed into Mumbai. They split into pairs, and spent the next 72 hours targeting the city's landmarks. A hospital was attacked; so was a Jewish centre. Kasab was the only terrorist who was caught alive.
Earlier this year, Abu Jundal was deported to India by Saudi Arabia. He has confessed to serving as a handler for the Mumbai attacks - over the phone, he directed Kasab and the others on how to ravage the city and where to go next.
Jundal has been interrogated by various police agencies as well as the National Investigating Agency (NIA), which is coordinating the probe on 26/11.
In India, only one execution has taken place in the last 15 years - that of a former security guard hanged in 2004 for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl.
President Pranab Mukherjee, who took office in July, is considering 11 other appeals from death row prisoners.
(
With inputs from agencies)