Mohammad Ajmal Kasab’s Bollywood dreams

After first denying that he was the lone surviving Mumbai gunman, and then shocking the court by pleading guilty, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab has changed his story yet again:  Kasab insisted today that this was not the case, smiling as he set out his new version of events. Far from arriving by sea with the other ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

After first denying that he was the lone surviving Mumbai gunman, and then shocking the court by pleading guilty, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab has changed his story yet again: 

After first denying that he was the lone surviving Mumbai gunman, and then shocking the court by pleading guilty, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab has changed his story yet again: 

Kasab insisted today that this was not the case, smiling as he set out his new version of events. Far from arriving by sea with the other gunmen on the night the attacks began, he said, he had pitched up nearly three weeks earlier hoping to break into the Bollywood film industry and had been picked up by the police three days before the attacks for being Pakistani.

It was his misfortune, he claimed, to be the doppelgänger of one of the gunmen shot dead by police. Lacking a culprit to put on trial, they had taken him from his cell the day the attacks were launched, shot him to make it look as if he had been injured in the crossfire and then framed him, he said.

"I was not present in the Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus and I did not open firing inside the railway station. I have never seen an AK-47 in my life, or even a rubber dingy," he told the astonished courtroom.

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

More from Foreign Policy

A photo collage illustration shows U.S. political figures plotted on a foreign-policy spectrum from most assertive to least. From left: Dick Cheney, Nikki Haley, Joe Biden, George H.W. Bush, Ron Desantis, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Bernie Sanders.
A photo collage illustration shows U.S. political figures plotted on a foreign-policy spectrum from most assertive to least. From left: Dick Cheney, Nikki Haley, Joe Biden, George H.W. Bush, Ron Desantis, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Bernie Sanders.

The Scrambled Spectrum of U.S. Foreign-Policy Thinking

Presidents, officials, and candidates tend to fall into six camps that don’t follow party lines.

A girl touches a photograph of her relative on the Memory Wall of Fallen Defenders of Ukraine in the Russian-Ukrainian war in Kyiv.
A girl touches a photograph of her relative on the Memory Wall of Fallen Defenders of Ukraine in the Russian-Ukrainian war in Kyiv.

What Does Victory Look Like in Ukraine?

Ukrainians differ on what would keep their nation safe from Russia.

A man is seen in profile standing several yards away from a prison.
A man is seen in profile standing several yards away from a prison.

The Biden Administration Is Dangerously Downplaying the Global Terrorism Threat

Today, there are more terror groups in existence, in more countries around the world, and with more territory under their control than ever before.

Then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez arrives for a closed-door briefing by intelligence officials at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
Then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez arrives for a closed-door briefing by intelligence officials at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Blue Hawk Down

Sen. Bob Menendez’s indictment will shape the future of Congress’s foreign policy.