HC acquits two terror accused

Bhadra Sinha / TNN / Sep 9, 2006, 02:25 IST

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Two persons who were arrested in 1999 for allegedly conspiring to cause explosions in the Capital before the elections.

NEW DELHI: Two persons who were arrested in 1999 for allegedly conspiring to cause explosions in the Capital before the elections, have been acquitted by the Delhi High Court after the criminal division bench found that the police had failed to collect "solid evidence" against them.
Justice R S Sodhi and Justice P K Bhasin, however, convicted their associate who was arrested from the National Zoological Park along with some explosives.
Mohammad Akbar Butt was found guilty of being in possession of more than 10 kilogram of RDX.
According to the prosecution, Butt was arrested from the zoological park after the special cell received information about the presence of Kashmiri militants in Delhi, who had come to cause explosions before the elections.

On August 30, 1999, the special cell team of Delhi Police reached the spot and asked for assistance from public persons. On receiving a negative reply from all of them, the police party went ahead with its operation.
It spotted Butt with a bag and at the instance of an informer, the team arrested Butt. Butt disclosed he was the district commander of Harkat-Ul-Ansar and had brought explosive material to Delhi at the instance of ISI agency.

Butt's interrogation led to the arrest of his two associates. While Shahnawaz Latif was arrested from a guesthouse located in Jama Masjid, his brother Shahid Latif was picked up by the special cell from Jammu.
From Shahnawaz, the police recovered rupees two lakh. After Shahid's arrest, the police found two stamps from him which were used to make forged identity cards.
Shahid had apparently used the same stamps to prepare a fake identity card for Butt. While one stamp was of executive magistrate of Bhadarwa, the other was of tehsildar, executive magistrate, Bhadarwa.
Although the special cell had charged all the three for sedition and waging a war against the country alongwith some sections of the Explosive Act, the sessions court upheld the charges against them for allegedly being in possession of explosives material.
They were set free under the various sections of the Indian Penal Code. All of them appealed before the high court. With connection to Shahnawaz and Shahid, the court observed that the police had collected weak evidence against them.
"The police should have collected more solid evidence against Shahnawaz to show that he had the knowledge that Butt had come to Delhi with RDX to be delivered here," the judges observed.
Shahid has been set free as the judges felt that mere recovery of fake identity stamps from his custody was no evidence to suggest that he had abetted Butt to procure the explosives.

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