Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said government, on its part, will ensure that if Kasab files a mercy plea, it is disposed of in minimum time and asked Pakistan to punish other perpetrators who have taken shelter on its soil.
"...Now, he should be given complete sentence quickly. Punishment should be executed quickly," Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh said reacting to the Supreme Court verdict on Kasab's appeal against his conviction and sentence.
BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said, "Those who wage war against the country and kill innocents deserve no mercy.... Kasab should be hanged without any delay ... Enough of 'biryani' for him."
Describing Pakistan as "a terror factory", he said the government "must take all steps to destroy" terror infrastructure and sought a separate set of laws to deal with terror-related cases.
"No leniency should be shown against this kind of a terrorist. They have tried to destroy the peace of the nation, so he (Kasab) should be hanged as fast as possible," Naqvi said.
Law Minister Salman Khurshid described the judgement as "inevitable" and rejected suggestions of delay in the final verdict saying a country governed by rule of law cannot mete out street justice.
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"I had seen the Bombay High Court judgement. It was very, very complicated judgement for the judiciary to have given. They must have worked very hard on it. That's been upheld by the Supreme Court. I think most people who do analysis of law would say this was an inevitable endorsement that would have come," he told reporters in Delhi.
Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who led the case against Kasab during the trial process, said the death sentence awarded to Kasab should be executed as soon as possible so that it gives a strong signal to the terrorists that law takes stern action against such acts.
He also demanded that the prosecution against perpetrators of the 2008 terror strikes should now be expedited in Pakistan. MORE