By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent,
Ernakulam: The National Investigation Agency today submitted the chargesheet in the Kalamassery bus-burning case. Soofiya Maudany, wife of PDP chairman Abdunnasir Maudany, is the tenth accused in the case which has Thadiyantavide Naseer, suspected Lashkar e Toiba operative, as the prime accused.
The NIA has included 13 persons in the chargesheet. Soofiya Maudany and Naseer have been charged with treason also, according to reports. Abdul Raheem, 12th accused who was reportedly killed in encounter in Kashmir, has been removed from the list. Three of the accused are absconding. The chargesheet was submitted before S Vijay Kumar, CBI special court judge dealing with the NIA cases.
The central government gave permission to the NIA to prosecute all the 13 accused in the case reportedly on 7th of this month. Permission of the Home Ministry was required as the case included charges of treason.
A bus of the Tamil Nadu Transport Corporation, going from Ernakulam to Salem, was burned at Kalamassery on September 9, 2005. The burning took place after all the passengers were evicted, and hence there were no casualty. The bus was torched by suspected PDP activists protesting against the continued denial of bail to Maudany who was then in Coimbatore jail in connection with the 1998 Coimbatore bomb blast, according to the investigating agencies.
The NIA has been probing the case for a year now. The incident which took place in 2005 was investigated by the local police for four years and the NIA for a year. The local police and the NIA had questioned both Maudany and Soofiya several times in connection with the case, as it was accused that the other accused had phoned both of them before and after the burning of the bus. While the accusation could not be proved against Maudany, Soofiya was included in the case as the police reportedly got her phone details. She was arrested by the police on December 18, 2009 and was later released on bail on strict condition that she should not leave the district of Ernakulam.
Thadiyantavide Naseer, suspected to be south Indian commander of the Lashkar e Toiba, has been accused in several other cases in the state such as the Kerala-Kashmir terror case and the Kozhikode twin blasts case.