The Hindu : Accused in Parliament attack denies involvement

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Sep 22, 2002

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Accused in Parliament attack denies involvement

New Delhi Sept. 21. Navjot Sandhu, alias Afsan Guru, the woman accused in the Parliament attack case, on Friday told a Delhi court that she was unaware why police implicated her in the case when she had no idea about the militants' plan to storm the complex.

``I am not involved in the case. I cannot say how police reached me. I do not know why I am made an accused in the case,'' Afsan, wife of Jaish-e-Mohammed militant and co-accused, Shaukat Hussain Guru, said in her statement before the Special Judge S.N. Dhingra.

She was replying to the prosecution allegation that a day before the December 13 attack, five Pakistani militants and the other accused in the case had assembled at her rented flat to discuss the plan in her presence.

Besides Afsan and her husband, the JeM pointman in the capital, Mohd. Afzal, and S.A.R. Geelani, a suspended university lecturer, are accused in the case.

Afsan, however, conceded that she introduced herself as Jyoti to get the flat on rent. She said Afzal, who is a cousin of her husband, used to visit her flat, but denied that Geelani was a visitor at their residence. Afsan said she did not know if her husband was arrested along with Afzal in Srinagar.

Denying the prosecution allegation that the other three accused were in contact with her on cellular phone after the attack, she said she did not have a mobile phone. She alleged that she was made to sign some documents in police custody, which she was not allowed to read.

The court had framed charges against the four accused in the December 13 Parliament attack, accusing them of attempting to kill the Vice-President, the Prime Minister, Central Ministers, MPs and several other VIPs.

The accused have been charged with threatening the unity, integrity, security and sovereignty of the country by waging a war against it and committing several other offences under the POTA, the IPC, the Explosive Substances Act and the Arms Act. — PTI

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