Early Life
Kasab was born in Faridkot village in the Okara District of Punjab, Pakistan, to Amir Shahban Kasab and Noor Illahi. His father ran a snack cart while his elder brother, Afzal, worked as a labourer in Lahore. His elder sister, Rukaiyya Husain, was married and lived in the village. A younger sister, Suraiyya, and brother, Munir, lived in Faridkot with their parents. The family belongs to the Qassab community.
Kasab briefly joined his brother in Lahore and then returned to Faridkot. He left home after a fight with his father in 2005. He had asked for new clothes on Eid, but his father could not provide them, which made him angry. He engaged in petty crime with his friend Muzaffar Lal Khan, moving on to armed robbery. On 21 December 2007, Eid al-Adha, they were in Rawalpindi trying to buy weapons when they encountered members of Jama'at-ud-Da'wah, the political wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba, distributing pamphlets. They decided to sign up for training with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, ending up at their base camp, Markaz Taiba.
An interrogator and deputy commissioner of the Mumbai Police stated that Kasab spoke rough Hindi and almost no English. Some sources said his father asked him to join Lashkar-e-Taiba so that he could use the money they gave him to support the family. But Kasab's father told reporters, "I don't sell my sons." Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a senior commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, reportedly offered to pay his family Rs.150,000 for his participation in the attacks. Another report said the 23-year-old was recruited from his home, in part, based on a pledge by recruiters to pay Rs.100,000 to his family if he became a martyr. Other sources put the reward at US $4,000.
Villagers of Okara claimed on camera that he was at their village six months before the Mumbai attack. They said that he asked his mother to bless him as he was going for Jihad, and claimed that he demonstrated his wrestling skills to a few village boys that day.
Read more about this topic: Ajmal Kasab
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