Considering that the lone 26/11 terrorist captured alive, Ajmal Amir Kasab, is a primary school dropout from Pakistan and perhaps cannot read English, advocate K B N LAM has sent a second letter to Kasab, this time in Urdu, urging him to accept him as his lawyer.

Lam, who has shown his willingness to defend him, believes Urdu is Kasab’s mother tongue.

The letter, a copy of which is with Newsline, was sent to the Mumbai Police Crime Branch on February 11. Lam has received an acknowledgement from the police. Lam, who studied law in London, practises mostly at the Small Causes court. After the court-appointed lawyer, Dinesh Mota, refused to take up the case, Lam had volunteered to defend Kasab, writing to him in English then.

“Under the law, everyone should get a fair chance to be defended,” Lam told Newsline, explaining why he sent the letter.

In the new letter, Lam says he is neither Hindu nor Muslim. “I am Parsi by birth, as was the Qaid-e-Azam’s (M A Jinnah’s) wife. So communal concerns ought not to be so relevant to you,” it says. “I can quite understand that you would prefer to be defended by a Pakistani lawyer, but unless the court grants special permission, a Pakistani advocate cannot work in an Indian court.”

The letter, translated into Urdu for Lam by a retired Indian Navy commander who lived in Rawalpindi until Partition, also explains to Kasab his rights as an accused: “Whatever you may or may not have done, it is a criminal offence for anyone, in custody or elsewhere, to get violent unless the person was acting in self-defence. I want to ensure that you are allowed to sleep a fair bit and provided with simple food and drink.”

The letter says Kasab should eat vegetarian food and learn meditation and yoga. “This sort of association with ahimsa, the focal point of Indian culture, will enable you to believe that those who destroy themselves or others in the name of religion do not really belong to any religion. You may soon start accepting how utterly erroneous and unethical the Partition of this country was.”