Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab has been sentenced to death in India for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The 22-year-old Pakistani national was one of two heavily armed gunmen who opened fire and threw hand grenades at the city's main railway station on 26 November 2008, killing 52 people and wounding more than 100.
He was born in the village of Faridkot in a remote region of Punjab in Pakistan's farming belt.
Kasab dropped out of school in 2000 and worked as a labourer in the eastern city of Lahore until 2005, according to his initial confession to police.
Kasab reportedly said he joined the Islamist group blamed for the attacks to get weapons training after deciding to embark on a life of crime but there have also been claims that his father duped him into doing it for money.
He first pleaded not guilty last April but in July made a shock confession, admitting being one of the 10 gunmen trained, equipped and financed by the banned, Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.
He then reverted to his initial denial in December and said he had been framed by police after coming to Mumbai - home to India's popular Hindi-language film industry, Bollywood - 'to see cinema'.
Kasab appeared relaxed in the trial's early stages, dressed in either a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms or a traditional kurta-pyjama, joking in the dock with his two Indian co-defendants or smiling at lawyers and reporters.
But he seemed increasingly sullen, withdrawn and even asleep as the trial progressed, prompting fears for his mental state. He showed no emotion in the dock when he was pronounced guilty of murder and waging war on India on Monday.
During the trial, he alleged several times that his prison food was laced with drugs and asked to be allowed out of the solitary confinement in which he has been held since his arrest 18 months ago.
Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam characterised Kasab as a shrewd and calculating operative, saying ‘a snake would feel insulted if likened to Kasab’ and describing him as a ‘human shape’ with no feelings or emotion.
While pushing for the death penalty for Kasab, Mr Nikam dealt at length on the apparent smile Kasab wore while firing on travellers in the train station and his reported regret at arriving late at the target because he had missed the commuter rush.
His defence lawyer, K P Pawar, sought to remind the court that Kasab was a susceptible young man who had been brainwashed.
'He was mentally defective (at the time of the attacks) and the effect impaired his ability to appreciate the impact of his conduct,' defence lawyer K P Pawar told the court during discussions about his sentence.
