Former Rajya Sabha MP Majeed Memon was not Ajmal Kasab’s lawyer
Amidst the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, a post claiming that Sharad Pawar’s NCP made Ajmal Kasab’s lawyer, Majeed Memon, a Rajya Sabha MP, while the BJP gave an MP ticket to Ujjwal Nikam, who prosecuted Kasab and secured his death sentence, is being widely shared across social media platforms (here, here, and here). In this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Sharad Pawar made Ajmal Kasab’s lawyer, Majeed Memon, a Rajya Sabha MP, while the BJP awarded Ujjwal Nikam, the prosecutor who secured Kasab’s death sentence, an MP ticket.
Fact: Majeed Memon, a notable criminal lawyer in India, was not associated with the Ajmal Kasab trial. He served as a Rajya Sabha MP from the NCP from April 2014 to April 2020. In 2022, Majeed Memon quit the NCP and joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC). The BJP has allotted the Mumbai North Central MP ticket to Ujjwal Nikam, the public prosecutor in the Mumbai 26/11 terror attack trial. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
To check the authenticity of the viral claim, we conducted a relevant keyword search and found that the BJP offered lawyer Ujjwal Nikam a Lok Sabha MP seat from Mumbai North Central. Ujjwal Nikam gained nationwide recognition as the public prosecutor in the Mumbai 26/11 terror attack trial, securing the death sentence for Ajmal Kasab. He also served as the public prosecutor in various other high-profile cases, such as the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, the Shakti Mills gangrape case, and the Ahmednagar rape and murder case (here, here and here).
During our search, we found that since no lawyer was interested in defending Ajmal Kasab in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case, the Court appointed several lawyers (here, here & here) to provide legal aid to ensure a fair trial. Every accused has a right to undergo a fair trial and by not defending the accused it is impossible. Among them, key lawyers involved in his case were Abbas Kazmi, initially appointed as Kasab’s defence lawyer by the court but later removed for non-cooperation; K.P. Pawar, who was appointed after Abbas Kazmi’s removal and represented Kasab during a significant part of the trial; Amin Solkar and Farhana Shah, who defended Kasab in the Bombay High Court; and Raju Ramachandran, who served as Kasab’s lawyer in the Supreme Court of India during his appeal against the death penalty. Gopal Subramanium has led the counsel who argued in favour of the death sentence for Ajmal Kasab in the Supreme Court.
Majeed Memon, a notable criminal lawyer in India, was not associated with the Ajmal Kasab trial. He also expressed that he was not interested in defending Kasab (here & here). Majeed Memon has dealt with various high-profile cases, such as the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, representing many of the accused in that case. He has also defended several film stars and prominent personalities in criminal cases. Majeed Memon was a Rajya Sabha MP from the NCP from April 2014 to April 2020 (here & here). In 2022, Majeed Memon quit the NCP and joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
To sum up, former Rajya Sabha MP Majeed Memon was not Ajmal Kasab’s lawyer.