Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 20 (IANS) Opposing the appeal of six people convicted and sentenced in the 1996 Lajpat Nagar blasts, police Tuesday told the Delhi High Court that they have sufficient evidence against them.

Delhi Police’s counsel Pawan Sharma told a division bench of Justice Ravindra S. Bhat and Justice G.P. Mittal that the documents seized from the accused after the blast showed their involvement in the terrorist attack.

“The witnesses’ statements also prove that all the accused were involved in the blast. The trial court has pronounced its judgment rightly. So, their appeal should be dismissed,” said Sharma.

The court was hearing the appeals of the six convicted, of whom three are on death row, for the blast in the crowded market that killed 13 people. All six were members of the militant outfit Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF).

Ten people were put on trial and four were acquitted by the lower court.

Adjourning the matter till Wednesday, the court will hear arguments on a day-to-day basis as it involves an appeal against capital punishment.

The trial court in its 2010 verdict in one of the oldest pending blast cases had termed the crime as a “dastardly act” that fell under the “rarest of rare” category.

Of the six, Mohammed Naushad, Mohammedd Ali Bhatt and Mirza Nissar Hussain have been awarded death penalty. Javed Ahmed Khan, held guilty of serious offences of murder, conspiracy and attempt to murder, has been given life imprisonment.

Farooq Ahmed Khan and Farida Dar, held guilty under milder penal provisions, were sentenced to seven years’ jail term. However, they were released as they had spent much more time than that in prison already.

Ten people were arrested and put on trial. Besides these six, the others were Mirza Iftikhar, Latif Ahmed Waza, Syed Maqbool Shah, and Abdul Gani.

According to the prosecution, the accused were arrested soon after the blasts after police tracked the calls they made to various media houses, claiming responsibility for the terror attack.

“The convicts had no apparent justification or motive to take the lives of innocent citizens. The deceased persons or victims were not at all responsible for any grievances of the convicts towards the society or the government,” the sessions court had observed in its order.

Defence lawyers claimed their clients had been framed in the case as police planted arms and ammunition and explosives on them to claim recovery from different places in Jammu and Kashmir.

They have questioned the evidence that can be gleaned from the recoveries, and have in turn accused the agencies of keeping the arrested people in illegal custody even before the blast took place.