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Tamil Nadu
By K.T. Sangameswaran
Non-filing of the charge sheet within the stipulated period in the MDF case has resulted in the accused being enlarged on mandatory bail, enquiries reveal. On the Tamil New Year Day in 1995, a powerful blast ripped apart the three-storey building of the State headquarters of the Munnani office and destroyed a portion of an adjacent structure. A suicide bomber and one `Bible' Shanmugham, district organising secretary of the Munnani, were killed. After a case was registered by the Chintadripet police, the State Government ordered that the CB-CID investigate the matter, considering the sensational nature of the incident. Later, it was entrusted to the CB-CID's Special Investigation Team, which dealt only with cases relating to fundamentalism. According to a SIT official, nine persons, including the militant, Imam Ali, who was shot dead by the police in Bangalore after his escape in Madurai, have been cited as accused in the case. The accused were released on statutory bail. However, except Pappa alias Shamsudeen, none of them could come out, as they were involved in other cases also. Among the nine, a hunt is on for Abdubacker Siddiqui. After the CB-CID investigated the case, a reinvestigation was done by the SIT. Now, a technical requirement of establishing the identity of the ``suicide bomber'' is said to be the cause of delay in laying the charge sheet. As there was a dispute over the identity of the bomb carrier, stated to be Mustafa Rashadi, the police took blood samples from the body and from the person's relatives, but the analysis report was not received from the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics in Hyderabad even after the lapse of one year. A police official went to Hyderabad a fortnight ago to expedite the matter. Similarly, not much progress seems to have been made in the cases of the 1997 murders of Ramji of Tambaram and Ranganathan of Pudupet here. In the Ramji case, pending before the sessions court at Chengalpattu, charges had been framed, but it was held up as one of the accused filed a petition seeking discharge. The matter is to come up again on August 14. Trial will begin once the petition is disposed of. In the other case, charges were not framed yet. A petition, filed by the prosecution in the Madras High Court would have to be disposed of before the trial court proceeded further. Apart from the initial sensation caused by the arrest of 20 persons belonging to the MDF, the police could not file the charge sheet in time, and 16 of them were already on bail. Of the remaining four, detained under the National Security Act, Thoufiq was taken to Mumbai in the case of a blast in a train in December last. Sources said the MDF members allegedly had links in Mumbai, Hyderabad and also foreign countries, making collection of evidence a hard task. However, ``investigation is on in full swing''. The SIT handled nearly 110 cases of fundamentalism. Apart from procedural and technical delays, frequent change of officials in the SIT posed a stumbling block to expediting the cases, said the sources.
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