Kasab’s lawyer says sorry in court

MUMBAI - Mumbai lawyer S.G. Abbas Kazmi, who was found guilty of having ‘lied’ before the Special Court trying the case of Pakistani national Ajmal Amir Kasab, tendered an unconditional apology Friday afternoon.

However, he requested Special Judge M. L. Tahaliyani to consider removing the words pertaining to the ‘lies’ from his order.

The special judge promised to expunge those remarks from the records.

The matter was settled amicably after Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam had a private meeting with Kazmi, who was appointed by the court to represent the 26/11 accused, soon after the day’s proceedings started.

Nikam’s move was prompted by Kazmi’s announcement that he was prepared to withdraw from the case in view of Wednesday’s developments.

At this, Nikam requested the permission of the special judge to speak with Kazmi for some time before a final decision. After 30 minutes, the two lawyers returned and said the issue was resolved to the satisfaction of both parties.

On Thursday, the first anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, there were dramatic scenes when the special court found Kazmi guilty of telling a ‘lie’ and threatened to remove him from the trial of the Pakistani terrorist — Kasab was the only terrorist caught alive in the 26/11 attacks.

The issue rocked the court when Nikam expressed his intention to file an affidavit seeking permission to examine another 340 formal witnesses in the terror attacks trial.

These would be in addition to the 271 witnesses examined by Nikam in the last eight months of trial.

At this, Kazmi got up and claimed he was not informed of this development.

Nikam pointed out that not only had he expressed his intention to examine the formal witnesses through affidavit right at the early stages of the trial in May, but on Nov 17 (2009), had even sent all the copies of the 340 affidavits to the defence lawyer.

Accepting his contention, Tahaliyani termed Kazmi’s denial as “a crystal clear lie” and said that all this had happened in the open court in the presence of the defence lawyer. “How can you now deny it?” Tahaliyani demanded of Kazmi.

The defence lawyer said that he was not aware that the prosecution would be examining these 340 witnesses through affidavits.

Special Judge Tahaliyani then warned that if the defence lawyer continued with such an attitude, the court would have to consider whether he should be allowed to continue in the case or not.