26/11 terrorists’ college ID cards fake: Principal

“He is not a student of our college, I have never issued any identity card to him,” said college principal G. Radhakrishnan pointing to terror suspect Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab.

Kasab was part of a 10-member alleged Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) team who laid seige in the city in November 2008. The prosecution case is that the 10 men were carrying fake college identity (ID) cards of Hyderabad-based Arunodaya Degree and PG College to conceal their Pakistani nationality.

Radhakrishnan on Tuesday told the special court the seven ID cards recovered from Kasab and his nine slain accomplices were fakes. While the ID card recovered from Kasab showed his name as Sameer Choudhary, his slain ‘buddy partner’ Abu Ismail was carrying a card in the name of Naraish Verma.

“Identity cards issued by our college are filled in by students manually whereas these are filled in on computer,” he told special judge M.L. Tahaliyani.

Four other prosecution witnesses deposed in the special court — Nair hospital medical records officer Vinayak Gawankar and his assistant Kedar Joshi, who had prepared Kasab’s and Ismail’s admission papers on 26/11, Ramesh Manipuri, who witnessed the seizure of the service pistols of two policemen who gunned down Ismail, and Bachchha Yadav, who was present as panch when the hand grenade recovered from the stolen Skoda was defused.