INDIA HANGS THE ONLY SURVIVING MUMBAI ATTACKER

[But President Pranab Mukherjee, a veteran of India’s dominant Congress Party, decided on Nov. 5 to reject Mr. Kasab’s petition, beginning a swift process that led to his execution Wednesday. Crucial state elections will be held next month in Gujarat, where anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan sentiments are popular and where the Congress Party is a considerable underdog.]

By Gardiner Harris

Sebastian D'Souza/Mumbai Mirror, via Associated Press

Ajmal Kasab at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in
Mumbai in November 2008.

NEW DELHI — Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that left 166 people dead, was hanged Wednesday in a surprise action that analysts in both India and Pakistan said was unlikely to derail improving ties.

Mr. Kasab was one of 10 young men who hijacked an Indian fishing boat, killed its captain, took a rubber dinghy into Mumbai and then systematically attacked high-end hotels, a train station, a hospital and a Jewish community center over the course of three chaotic days. The 10 were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based terrorist group, and their actions were directed by phone by people in Pakistan. Nine of the attackers were killed by Indian forces, and their bodies were buried in an undisclosed location. Only Mr. Kasab survived.

Pictures of Mr. Kasab wearing a black shirt and carrying an automatic weapon played on television all day on Wednesday in India, where the execution y received blanket coverage. By contrast, news channels in Pakistan gave it considerably less attention, and the Pakistani government offered no official statement.

Tariq Fatemi, a retired Pakistani senior diplomat, said that some extremist groups would be angered by the hanging but that many other Pakistanis, including senior government officials, had been “deeply embarrassed” by Mr. Kasab and the Mumbai attacks.

Mr. Fatemi predicted that the hanging would do little to slow improving ties between the two countries.

“There is a virtual consensus among Pakistan’s mainstream political parties on the importance of keeping the process on the rails and even promoting it,” said Mr. Fatemi, citing recent trade liberalization measures.

Indeed, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan confirmed on Tuesday his country had ratified an agreement with India to allow six-month visitors visas, one of many steps in the two nations’ growing ties.

For months after the attacks, Pakistan denied that Mr. Kasab was one of its citizens. The country finally admitted that he was in 2009. In its fax to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, Indian officials asked that Mr. Kasab’s family be informed of his execution.

The fax was necessary because the government of Pakistan refused to acknowledge the receipt of a letter informing them of the execution, top Indian officials said.

“So we faxed it, therefore our obligation to inform them adequately was fulfilled,” said Salman Kurshid, India’s minster of external affairs.

Since no one had asked for Mr. Kasab’s body, the government buried him at the Yeravada Central Prison in Pune, officials said.

Mr. Kasab was sentenced to hang in May 2010, but executions have become so rare in India — the last was in 2004 — that there had long been speculation about whether Indian officials would commute the sentence and, if not, when it might be carried out.

The secrecy surrounding the timing of the execution was intended to avoid continuing irritation to relations with Pakistan and to forestall lobbying by European governments that oppose the death penalty, according to unnamed officials quoted in the Indian media.

The Indian home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, denied that domestic political considerations played any role in the timing of Mr. Kasab’s hanging.

“There is no question of mileage-taking,” he said. “It was already decided.”

There are hundreds of people on India’s death row, many of whom have filed clemency petitions with India’s president. One of those is Afzal Guru, who was involved in a 2001 attack on India’s Parliament and whose petition would normally be decided before those filed later, including Mr. Kasab’s.

But President Pranab Mukherjee, a veteran of India’s dominant Congress Party, decided on Nov. 5 to reject Mr. Kasab’s petition, beginning a swift process that led to his execution Wednesday. Crucial state elections will be held next month in Gujarat, where anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan sentiments are popular and where the Congress Party is a considerable underdog.

Prakash Javadekar, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition party in the central government and the dominant party in Gujarat, welcomed the news of Mr. Kasab’s execution and said that other attackers should meet the same fate.

“This is a belated news but still good news,” Mr. Javadekar said. “There can’t be any queue for terrorists, and the mercy petition should be decided early and Afzal Guru should also be hanged.”

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the Mumbai attacks, has become a prominent public figure in Pakistan over the past year, frequently appearing at political rallies and anti-American demonstrations. He often mocks a $10 million American bounty for information leading to his capture.

The trial of seven Lashkar-e-Taiba militants accused of orchestrating the Mumbai attacks from Pakistani soil, including its operational commander, Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, is proceeding slowly. During the last hearing on Nov. 10, five police officials told the court that Lashkar-e-Taiba had shut down many of its militant training camps inside Pakistan. The statements were seen as the first official admission from Pakistan of the existence of such camps in relation with the Mumbai attacks. The next hearing is scheduled for Dec. 1.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Declan Walsh and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan. 

@ The New York Times

FIGHTING FOR FREE SPEECH ONLINE IN INDIA

[The court responded to Mr. Marx's request on Tuesday, serving notice to state officials, as well as the secretaries of India's home, law and information and broadcasting ministries, asking them to respond to Mr. Marx's lawsuit in four weeks.]

By Sangeetha Rajeesh and Heather Timmons

Marx Anthonisamy is a 63-year-old retired physics professor, a Tamil literature critic and author who lives in Chennai, where he pens books on politics, Hindutva, Buddhism and Islam.

He also happens to be on the front lines of a growing grass-roots movement in India against the country's sweeping, controversial Information Technology Act. In a public interest litigation filed with the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Nov. 7, he demanded the government repeal section 66A of the act, which he calls "arbitrary and unconstitutional."

The section in question, which was adopted in 2008, puts any person who "sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device" at risk of being jailed if anyone who reads the sender's message finds it "causes annoyance or inconvenience." Section 66A has been invoked in recent arrests related to messages posted on Facebook and Twitter, including the arrests of two women in Mumbai earlier this week.

The court responded to Mr. Marx's request on Tuesday, serving notice to state officials, as well as the secretaries of India's home, law and information and broadcasting ministries, asking them to respond to Mr. Marx's lawsuit in four weeks.

Mr. Marx, who goes by his first name like many in South India, said filing the lawsuit is the latest move in his long career in human rights. "Activism has always been my passion even from my professor days," he said.

For 30 years, he said, he has "been involved with fighting for human rights," including protests and campaigns like one against the recent caste-based violence in the Dharmapuri district in Tamil Nadu.

Mr. Marx completed his master's degree in physics at Presidency College in Chennai, and a master's in philosophy at Regional Engineering College in Trichy, before teaching physics for more than 35 years in Tamil Nadu. After he retired from teaching three years ago, he became the state convenor of the People's Union for Human Rights, a decade-old human rights group that works in the state. He has written 50 books, all in Tamil, and dozens of articles on laws and social awareness, which he posts on his Web site.

Mr. Marx said his family was steeped in Marxism, a popular political doctrine throughout south India for decades, and he attributed his principles to his father. "I'm a little left-oriented; and reading a lot of Marxist literature when I was growing up has influenced me," he said.

Mr. Marx isn't alone in criticizing Section 66A of the Information Technology Act. Since the October arrest of Ravi Srinivasan, a Puducherry businessman and volunteer with India Against Corruption, a popular activist group, human rights workers, lawyers, journalists and social media activists have called for the act's repeal. Mr. Srinivasan was arrested after he went on Twitter to accuse the son of Finance Minister P Chidambaram of corruption and was later released on bail.

If Mr. Marx loses his lawsuit, he said he will file another one in a different court, undeterred in his fight to repeal the section.

"There are serious possibilities that Section 66A will be misused by the state and influential people against innocent citizens," Mr. Marx said. "It is a violation of our constitutional rights and is absolutely illegal."

@  The New York Times