Hours after she said she was “confident” and had “taken the right decision” by agreeing to defend Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive during the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Anjali Waghmare, a government legal aid panel lawyer and the wife of a city policeman, said she would withdraw from the case following a violent protest outside her house late tonight.

Waghmare’s turnaround came after hundreds of protesters, mostly Shiv Sainiks, gathered outside the police housing complex in Worli and shouted slogans against her for agreeing to take the case. Some even threw stones at her building but the mob could not reach her house inside the compound. “No one is hurt but I have decided to withdraw,” Waghmare told The Indian Express on the phone.

If the special court appointed to try Kasab allows her to withdraw, she would be the second to do so. In December, a local lawyer, Dinesh Mota, had been selected to represent Kasab but he withdrew at the last minute citing personal ethics and said he was even willing to risk his licence than defend Kasab.

Earlier in the day, Special Judge M L Tahilyani had picked 40-year-old Waghmare, the mother of a child, from among seven lawyers who had been shortlisted from the 17-member state legal aid panel. The court had also said that the trial would now start on April 6 at a special court being set up inside the Arthur Road jail.

A law graduate from Pune’s Symbiosis University, Waghmare began her career in 1996 and has been on the state legal aid panel for 12 years, conducting murder trials. After her appointment, she had said: “I am confident of myself and, being an Indian citizen, have taken the right decision by accepting the case as, legally, Kasab cannot be tried without legal representation.” She has appeared in several important cases such as the fake stamp paper case and in a few hearings for 1993 blasts accused Karimulla, a close aide of extradited gangster Abu Salem.

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