The Hindu : Parliament attack case judgment on Dec. 11

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 26, 2002

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National

Parliament attack case judgment on Dec. 11

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI NOV. 25. Justice S. N. Dhingra, of the Special POTA court, will deliver his judgment in the Parliament attack case on December 11, two days before the first anniversary of the attack.

Four persons, including the former JKLF militant, Mohammed Afzal, businessman Shaukat Hussain Guru, the Delhi University lecturer, Syed Abdul Rehman Geelani, and Afsan Guru, wife of Shaukat Hussain have stood trial on charges of conspiracy and sedition.

At the conclusion of the trial today the Public Prosecutor, D. P. Agarwal , asked the court to consider that this was the first case under POTA to come to trial and so errors in the investigation were to be expected. He said "this is the first POTA case investigated by the Delhi police so there may be contradictions, but they are small contradictions.'' The judge reminded him that Delhi police had years of experience in investigating cases under TADA.

Earlier, counsel for the main accused, Mohammed Afzal, told the court that police had failed to provide evidence to support the details of its charges against his client. He said no independent witnesses had been produced to confirm the fact relating to where Mohammed Afzal lived, and the purchases, including of explosive substances, he is supposed to have made in preparation for the attack. The judge told him that since Mohammed Afzal had provided all this information to police in his confession there was no need for further verification.

Defence counsel, Neeraj Bansal also pointed out the discrepancy in the police version regarding the crucial mobile telephone number supposed to link Afzal to the deceased terrorists. A police witness had said under oath that he sold the sealed and previously unused SIM card to Afzal on December 4, 2001. However mobile phone records provided by the police indicate that the calls from that number were made in mid-November many weeks prior to its sale to Afzal.

The judge said that this was also invalidated by the fact that there was a receipt on September 21 pertaining to its sale. This receipt, referred to several times during the trial, was from the distributor to the retailer of the Sim card. Defence counsel, who has been appointed by the court to act for Afzal, failed to clarify this.

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