As the Bombay high court gears up to give the final verdict on the confirmation of death sentence awarded to lone surviving 26/11 terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Kasab on February 21, a key question arises of what happened to the case of David Coleman Headley.
During the appeal before the high court, various pleas were made before the bench to prosecute Headley, who has confessed to his role in the terror attacks that left 166 people dead in Mumbai. However, these pleas were turned down and the HC decided to proceed with the appeal against the order of the 26/11 trial court that had sentenced Kasab to death while acquitting Fahim Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed, alleged Lashkar-e-Tayiba operatives.
Sources now tell
rediff.com that there was a deliberate ploy on behalf of the home ministry to keep Headley out of the case for now. The proof of the same is a Letter Rogatory (Letter of Request) from the district court that was sent to the home ministry way back in September 2010. However, this letter from the Chicago district court was not sent to the special court since it felt that it would add to the complexities of the ongoing trial.
A Letter Rogatory is a communication a court sends to a foreign court for judicial assistance. It goes through diplomatic channels making the process lengthy.
Sources say that there are two reasons why the Letter Rogatary had not been sent to the special court. One is that the National Investigating Agency was still probing the case and secondly this letter would mean that the Headley angle had to be included in the trial, which