ROUNDUP : Indian police want death sentence for Mumbai terrorist

New Delhi - Mumbai police are seeking the death penalty for the lone gunman captured alive in terrorist attacks on the city in November last year, news reports said Saturday. Jayant Patil, home minister of Maharashtra state, said police demanded the death penalty for Ajmal Amir Kasab, the PTI news agency reported. Kasab, allegedly of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group, will face trial for murder and 'waging war against India.' Two Indian operatives of the group, Faheem Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed, will also be tried for allegedly giving logistical support to the attackers, the Kolkata-based Telegraph news daily reported. Kasab was part of a 10-member group that reached Mumbai by sea and laid siege for three days beginning November 26. Kasab was arrested hours after the assault began and has been in police custody since. More than 170 people including 26 foreign nationals were killed during the siege. Pakistan, which recently admitted that the attacks were partly planned on its soil, also arrested several militants including the outfit's chief, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, for planning the attacks. Meanwhile, the Indian government said it had 'overwhelming evidence' that official agencies of Pakistan were behind the assault. India's Federal Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram in an interview with a news channel, said Islamabad was doing nothing to dismantle terrorist camps operating on its soil. '..Given the overwhelming evidence we have, I am entitled to presume that official agencies (of Pakistan) were involved (in the Mumbai attacks),' Chidambaram told the CNN-IBN network. In January, Indian premier Manmohan Singh had said the attacks had the 'support of some official agencies in Pakistan'. Later on in February, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said Pakistan's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, was linked to the perpetrators of the attacks. 'The perpetrators planned, trained and launched their attacks from Pakistan, and the organizers were and remain clients and creations of the ISI,' Menon said.