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Azar declared 'proclaimed offender' in Parliament attack

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 1. While the Centre today banned two terrorist organisations operating in Jammu and Kashmir under the newly-enacted Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), 2002, a Delhi court declared three Pakistani nationals, including the Jaish-e-Mohammad chief, Masood Azhar, "proclaimed offenders'' in the December 13 attack on Parliament.

The Central Government declared the Al-Badr and the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen as "terrorist organisations" under POTA "with immediate effect,'' an official release of the Home Ministry said here. With this, the total number of organisations banned under POTA since October last has gone up to 27.

In a separate development, the special judge, S.N. Dhingra, declared, besides Azhar, the Jaish's chief "commander" in Jammu and Kashmir, Ghazi Baba, and his close aide, Tariq Ahmed, as "proclaimed offenders'' in the Parliament attack.

He also directed the Delhi Police to seek the help of Interpol after the prosecution submitted that all steps had been taken to trace the three. "There is no possibility of their being submitted to the jurisdiction of this court or being arrested,'' the Delhi Police said. The prosecution had moved an application before the court urging it to declare the three as proclaimed offenders. The court was informed that all efforts had been made to trace the immovable and movable properties of the three persons, without any success.

The Delhi Police have charged Azhar, one of the three terrorists freed in exchange for the safe release of hostages aboard the Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Kandahar in 1999, Ghazi Baba and Tariq Ahmed with having masterminded the attack on Parliament. All the five terrorists who made a bid to storm the Parliament House complex on December 13 were killed in an encounter with the security forces.

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