19 years in jail for crime they didn’t commit

NT Bureau

Mumbai: Nineteen years after seven train blasts here killed more than 180 persons, the Bombay High Court on Monday acquitted all the 12 accused, saying the prosecution “utterly failed” to prove the case and it was “hard to believe the accused committed the crime”.

The judgement comes as a major embarrassment to the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) which probed the case. The agency had claimed that the accused were members of the banned outfit Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and had hatched the conspiracy with Pakistani members of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

In a damning indictment of the prosecution’s case, the high court declared all confessional statements of the accused as inadmissible suggesting “copying”. The five persons who had been sentenced to death by the trial court are Kamal Ansari, Mohammad Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddiqui, Naveed Hussain Khan and Asif Khan.

All had been held guilty of planting the bombs. Kamal Ansari died in 2021 due to Covid-19 while in the Nagpur Central Jail. The seven others who had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court are Tanveer Ahmed Ansari, Mohammed Majid Shafi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam, Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzzam mil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Suhail Mehmood Shaikh and Zameer Ahmed Latifur Rehman Shaikh.

Further eroding the credibility of the confessions, the court said the accused had successfully established that torture was inflicted upon them to extort these confessional statements. A special bench of Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak said the prosecution has failed to even bring on record the type of bombs used and that the evidence relied on by it was not conclusive.

“Punishing the actual perpetrator of a crime is a concrete and essential step toward curbing criminal activities, upholding the rule of law, and ensuring the safety and security of citizens,” HC said.(Agencies)