MUMBAI: The Hindu extremist Shiv Sena party yesterday took a defensive stand on the issue of attack on the house of Anjali Waghmare, the lawyer for the lone alleged surviving terrorist in the Mumbai terror attacks, Muhammad Ajmal Aamir Qasab.
About 200 Sena workers had gone on rampage on Monday midnight after Waghmare had taken the brief to defend Qasab on the order of the judge of the special court M.I. Tahilyani.
Waghmare told the media yesterday that she was firm on her stand to defend Qasab and that she would never be cowed down by threats of the Shiv Sena goons. She denied that she had withdrawn from defending Qasab following the attacks on her house and threats to her life. The Maharashtra government announced that it has accorded the highest Z category security cover to the lawyer.
“I will not withdraw from playing the defense lawyers role for Qasab at any cost and certainly not at any cost under the pressure of Shiv Sena,” she said firmly and boldly before the media at her residence in suburb Worli in central Mumbai. After the change of stand by Waghmare yesterday, the police are watching carefully for the reactions of the Sena and other Hindu fundamentalist organizations.
Meanwhile, the lawyers for the nine arrested Sena workers in the case who were produced in a local court yesterday, spelled out clearly to the judge that their clients had no intention of interfering in the judicial process relating to the case of Qasab.
The accused feared that the police might slam them with charges of contempt of court and interfering in the judicial process of the case. The defense lawyers told the court that the protests outside the house of Waghmare was due to the emotional outbursts of the people’s sentiments, who were of the opinion that Qasab should be hanged immediately.
Suspended assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze, who had recently joined the Sena, said that his organization would lodge a complaint against Waghmare with the Bar Council of India.
Vaze has objected to the twin role of Waghmare who would on one side defend Qasab and on the other would also defend the workers of Cama Hospital seeking compensation for them for being injured in the terror attacks.
In an unrelated development Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray said that it was a conspiracy of the Congress party to arrest Varun Gandhi under the National Security Act and make him rot in prison to please the Muslim vote banks.
“But then how can former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s grandson and Sanjay Gandhi’s son can be proved to be dangerous to the country,” Thackeray asked in an editorial in the party mouthpiece Saamna yesterday.
