India expressed disappointment on Friday over the 35-year jail term handed to an American plotter of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, saying it wanted nothing less than the death penalty.
David Coleman Headley, 52, a US citizen of Pakistani descent, was sentenced on Thursday by a Chicago court for helping plan the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 160 people, and conspiring to attack a Danish newspaper.
US prosecutors dropped their request for life imprisonment in exchange of Headley's testimony in cases against other suspects and cooperation with US intelligence officials.
"Our view has been that all those people who were involved in the conspiracy to kill people in Mumbai, all of them deserve death," Home Secretary RK Singh said. He said New Delhi would continue to press for Headley's extradition despite his plea bargain, under which he escaped the death penalty as well as extradition.
Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid echoed Singh's comments. "We would have liked a severer sentence, and we would have liked the accused to be tried in India," Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid said as he called the US sentencing a "beginning."
Headley conducted scouting visits to Mumbai, recording videos of buildings that were targeted in the three-day siege by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militants. In November, India executed the only surviving gunman, Ajmal Kasab, who was handed a death sentence by Indian courts.