Jaipur HC Acquits Six after 23 Years, 5 Freed In Another Case, NIA Withdraw Charges against Four
By Syyed Mansoor Agha
There is another heartbreaking story of terror accused, ‘framed, damned and acquitted’ after over two decades. Chronology of such cases, blatant misuse of terror laws, defaming a community and destroying lives of innocent families is long while real terror actors influenced by Hindutva discourse get protection by hook or by crook.
In the recent case Latif Ahmed Waja (42), Ali Bhatt (48), Mirza Nisar (39), Abdul Ghani (57) and Raees Beg (56), stepped out of prison on Tuesday, July 23. The case dates back to May 22, 1996, barely a week after Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee replaced Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao as the PM. On that day 14 passengers aboard a Rajasthan State Road Transport (RSRTC) bus on way to Bikaner from Agra were killed and 37 injured when a bomb ripped through the public transport vehicle. The incident occurred near village Samleti (146 Km from Agra) under PS Mahwah in Dausa, on the Jaipur-Agra highway.
The blast came a day after the Lajpat Nagar bomb blast in Delhi, in which 13 people were killed. An FIR was lodged the same day based on the statement of injured conductor of the bus at Mahwah PS. The case was investigated by local police with the help of state CB-CID and on record arrests were made from J&K and Uttar Pradesh. However three Kashmiri accused claimed that they were picked from Nepal, where they had gone to sell Kashmiri handicraft items.
Among the accused, Raees Beg had been incarcerated since June 8, 1997, while the others were imprisoned between June 17, 1996, and July 27, 1996. Police filed four charge sheets between September 12, 1996, and September 23, 1997. The trial court in 2014 convicted seven accused with life imprisonment and one Dr. Abdul Hameed, with capital punishment while three were acquitted.
The prosecution has alleged in the charge sheet that the men were associated with the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front. They were named in multiple terror cases, including in Sawai Man Singh Stadium blast in Jaipur in 1996.
The High Court bench of Justice Sabina and Justice Goverdhan Bardar found that the prosecution had failed to provide evidence of the conspiracy. It said the prosecution could not establish any link between them and the main accused Dr. Abdul Hameed of Agra. While acquitting five on July 22, Monday, the court upheld the death penalty of Dr Abdul Hameed and life sentence to Pappu Salim, a former approver who turned hostile.
The trial court in 2014 had convicted and awarded life imprisonment to Javed Khan, Abdul Ghani (Abdullah), Latif Ahmad Waja, Mohammad Ali Bhat and Mirza Nisar Hussain Naza from J&K and Raees Beg and Pappu Saleem from UP. They were sentenced for life imprisonment. Dr. Abdul Hameed was held guilty and given death sentence. Three other accused – Farookh Ahmad (Srinagar), Kuljinder Singh (Punjab) and Chandra Prakash Agarwal (Bandikui) were acquitted.
The HC acquitted six accused on Tuesday. Five of them were freed from the Jaipur jail after 23 years of imprisonment, while the sixth accused acquitted with them Javed Khan is not so lucky. He is still in Tihar Jail of Delhi as an accused in the Lajpat Nagar blast case. One has since died.
After their release, the five persons stressed that they were not even known to each other until the CID-CB made them accused in the case and crafted stories about their involvement in the terror act of which they had no idea. Among the five, three are from J&K. Mr Ghani is from Doda District, Bhat, and Waja from Srinagar. Before the skies befallen upon them Bhatt had a carpet business, Waja used to sell Kashmiri handicraft in Delhi and Kathmandu. Ghani used to run a school. Nisar says, he was a student of Class IX at that time and was just 16 years old, but the officials showed him of 19 at the time of his arrest. His poor and helpless parents could not contest the official claim about his age and he had to suffer for precious 23 years of his youth.
Mohammad Ali Bhat, Lateef Ahmad Waza and Mirza Nisar Hussain were first picked by Delhi police in 1996 in the prime of their youth as “terrorists” in Lajpat Nagar blast case. Ironically, Delhi High Court had acquitted them as innocent in the case way back in November 2012, but had to stay seven more years in the jail, awaiting the outcome of their appeals from the Rajasthan High Court in Samleti case in which they were awarded life imprisonment in 2014 by Additional District and Sessions Judge, Bandikul. Finally, the three were acquitted and released from jail as “innocents” after 23 years of incarceration. But it will be difficult for them to come out of the nightmare and rebuild their lives.
With the dreams of making a good future for them, the three in their mid-twenties had left their homes for Nepal to sell Kashmiri handicrafts but were imprisoned allegedly because somebody had made a crime and someone was wanted to be implicated to mark the performance of the law enforcing agencies. The framing of innocent persons in terror cases has a pattern. It is a political game to defame a community, to destroy the lives of their youth and to divide the nation on communal lines. Acquittals in a large number of cases put the seal that the innocents were framed not by error but by mischief. In several cases, judges had passed strictures against erring officers. However one should not put all blames on the police who are under the thumb of political bosses.
“We were picked up by police from Kathmandu where we had been doing the business of selling Kashmiri handicrafts,” Waza, Nisar and Bhatt reportedly said in unison after their release from jail.
“We all were innocent … how could anyone carry out the bomb blast in Delhi or Rajasthan while he was in Nepal? But the way we were tortured… made to sign blank papers, it was clear we were being made scapegoats,” Waza was reported as saying.
“They were quite innocent but named in multiple cases without any fault of them. They have been acquitted in all the cases – but after 23 years,” says their counsel, Syed Shahid Hasan. Pointing to the delay, he says the trial only began in 2011, after 15 years of arrest and FIR.
In another case, the NIA has dropped terror charges against four men arrested last December from Delhi and Amroha, (UP) for their alleged conspiracy to establish an “Islamic State Caliphate” like ‘fidayeen’ group in India and conduct large-scale terrorist attacks in and around Delhi. The agency on June 21 Friday, filed an FIR against other ten accused in a special court at Patiala House in Delhi.
The accused against whom the agency filed the charge-sheet include Mufti Mohd Suhail, 30, Anas Younus, 21, Zubair Malik, 22, Rashid Zafar, 24, Md. Saqib, 26, Md. Absar Saeed, 24, Md. Gufran, 25, Md. Faiz, 25, and Naim Choudhary, 22.
As PTI reported, a senior government official said no evidence was found against Mohammad Irshad, Raees Ahmad, Zaid Malik, and Mohammad Azam. “The NIA said in the court that sufficient evidence was not found against them but investigations will continue,” a newspaper quoted MS Khan, the lawyer representing the four men, as saying.
Irshad, a resident of Amroha in UP, is an auto-rickshaw driver. Raees, also a resident of Amroha, worked at a welding shop. Zaid was arrested from Jafrabad in East Delhi and Azam ran a medical store at Seelampur in East Delhi.
The four were freed after spending over six months in Jail. The Hindu reported on July 20 that the four were released early this month. A few months before general elections when NIA had conducted raids In December last year and in January the case had earned headlines with pictures in the media but their release passed on almost unnoticed.
While the agency was conducting ‘raids in connection with busting a new IS module called Harkat-ul-Harb-e-Islam’ the NIA issued a press release on December 26, 2018, and had accused Irshad of “helping Mufti Suhail (prime accused) in arranging a hideout for keeping the material for making IEDs and bombs.” It had also accused Raees Ahmad and his brother Saeed as being responsible for procuring a huge amount of explosive substance/gunpowder (around 25 kgs) for making improvised explosive devices and pipe bombs. It accused them of being involved in “fabricating a rocket launcher to carry out terrorist attacks”. The suspects have claimed that the “rocket launcher” like instrument was virtually a long jack used while repairing tractors.
As reported by IE (28 January 2019) the agency suspect that the handler of the alleged terror module is a Pakistani based person with the online identity of Abu Malik Peshawari and was instrumental in motivating the module’s alleged mastermind – Mufti Suhail, a Madrasa teacher in Amroha. It is also stated, the 29-year-old Mufti Suhail began trawling the Internet, he soon found a “friend and guide” on Facebook in Peshawari, said sources.
The Financial Express reported on Dec 29, 2018: “NIA sleuths also recovered one country-made rocket launcher, remote control car triggering switch, and a wireless digital doorbell for a remote switch from the possession of the accused. NIA also seized steel containers, electric wires, 91 mobile phones, 134 SIM cards, 3 laptops, knife, sword, ISIS-related literature and a cash amount of around Rs. 7.5 lakh.”
Obviously, certain items in the above list are of general use as wireless doorbell switch, some cash amount, knife, laptops and remote control car switch until evidence of their use for illegal activity comes to light. The charge-sheet filed before the Additional Sessions Judge Ajay Kumar Jain under various provisions of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act against accused including the alleged leader Mufti Suhail, the prosecutor has alleged that the Mufti along with Delhi resident Mohammad Faiz had formed a terror module inspired by the ISIS and called it “Harkat-ul-Harb-e-Islam”, the agency said.
Now since the case is sub judice, the outcome should be awaited. In certain cases, as Samjhauta Express blasts, NIA has allegedly suppressed evidence in the court under instructions of “higher-ups” which resulted in the acquittal of Aseemanand, etc. We can only hope that in this case, which has an international angle also, prosecutors will not be pressed to play foul and accused will get justice without much delay.
[The writer is a Civil Rights activist and journalist. syyedagha8@gmail.com]