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LAHORE: Ajmal Kasab, the ‘baby-faced butcher’, arrived on the scene in November 2008 and even though he was executed in a Pune jail about four years later on Wednesday, his image and his stereotype threatens to live on without being fully probed.

The criminal investigation or a lack of it apart, no serious study to understand his coming about has yet been undertaken and none is likely if the conventional and convenient methods of investigation continue to be obsessively applied.

Ajmal Kasab was the lone survivor among the 10 Mumbai attackers. In late November 2008 intelligence leaks to Indian media claimed he was a Pakistani hailing from a village named Faridkot. A search was launched by media in Pakistan and many Faridkots beckoned out of their unnoticed existence on the map. Finally, after a series of blanks, a tip from Okara in central Punjab said Ajmal Kasab’s family might be living in Faridkot village bang on the Kasur-Depalpur road, not far from Depalpur town.

An investigation by a Dawn reporter confirmed that Amir Kasab, identified by Indian media as the father of Ajmal, had indeed settled in Faridkot many years ago after arriving from nearby Haveli Lakha, and that among his children was a son who had left home some time ago.

Two Dawn journalists arrived in a neat-looking Faridkot lane in the first week of December, 2008. They were looking for the Kasab home and were met on the way by a man of medium build, clad in shalwar kameez. “Do you know someone from the Kasab family? Are they home?,” the man was asked.

“I am Kasab,” he replied. Then quickly and mechanically, he took out his identity card from his chest pocket, as if he had kept it handy for an impending identification. “Amir Kasab,” the card read.

In a few seconds, the journalists were inside Amir Kasab’s house. A pale-eyed woman sat on a charpoy, introduced to the visitors as Ajmal’s mother. Two younger women who stood by were identified as Ajmal’s sisters. Also around and visibly intrigued by the visit was a young boy in winter school uniform. He was said to be Ajmal’s younger brother.

A few hours earlier, the same journalists had found the details in the Indian media’s breaking stories on Ajmal Kasab a bit too difficult to stomach --- an example of how intelligence agencies used media to forward their own interests, how too much information gave a story-teller away. It was a story they were desperate to disprove, ready to suffer the embarrassment that awaits pursuers at the end chasing a red herring. In these stories, the attacker was painted as a poor runaway boy who, after wandering through Lahore, had met his jihadi handlers in Rawalpindi. However, in the poor and well-kempt courtyard of the Kasab family that afternoon, the probing journalists found some striking similarities between their surroundings and the bits reported in Indian media accounts of Ajmal’s confessions.

The reports said Amir Kasab was a snacks-seller in Faridkot, and now a handcart stood in one corner of the yard, stacked with steel plates and glasses washed and ready to serve. Amir said he sold pakoras in the village, a collection of quite spacious brick-houses against a background of richly cultivated fields and smoke-emitting factories that had been under-projected in the media leaks.

Much more devastating, the master of the house admitted the pictures flashed in media were his son’s. “Initially, I did not own up to this. But now I know that this is my son,” he said.

Then he sobbed and his wife’s face disappeared in the chador she had on her. The younger lot of the family looked on, as did the small crowd that had gathered inside the house, probably neighbours not all of whom were comfortable with the content of the unfolding conversation.

There were a few points which Amir Kasab adamantly denied. The media had implied that he had taken money against Ajmal’s services to the ‘handlers’ of the Mumbai attack --- an accusation that has been repeated after the execution now. “He had asked me to buy Eid clothes for him. When I refused he got angry and left,” Amir’s simple explanation said.

That was apparently the only exchange between the Kasab family of Faridkot near Depalpur and the media. Over the following hours, the village was besieged by journalists faced by a local nazim and his men determined to prevent any further prying into their lives, even if it required manhandling the nosey journalists.

One reporter working with a British paper located the Kasab name on an electoral roll. Yet, no clue was available to the whereabouts of Amir Kasab and his family. They had simply vanished from the scene.