By TCN News
Bhopal: There was hardly any coverage in the English news media on the acquittal of six former members of SIMI on the charges of promoting hatred in Bhopal. Even if it was covered in some local Hindi newspapers those reports instead of acknowledging the fabricated case and innocence of Muslim youths, they taunted police and govt. for not building up a strong case against ‘Desh Drohis’.
On July 10th, a 12 year despair ended for six Muslim youths, these former members of SIMI were booked in sec 153 (A), (B) of I.P.C, in the year 2000 for allegedly pasting posters on a mosques which according to the police promoted hatred among the communities. But with this acquittal the case built up by the police and prosecution fell like a house of cards, because it was a house of cards rotten from within.
A protest demonstration in Patna on 2nd April 2012 against arrest of innocent Muslim youths in terror cases
Advocate Parvez Alam who fought this case in Bhopal district court told TwoCircles.net that there was huge number of gaffes in this case which the police and prosecution had fabricated. He said, “First of all this case was illegal from the beginning, police filed charge sheet five years after registering the case, police didn’t even made a ‘Panchnama’ on the allegations that posters were pasted on the mosque walls, despite of this facts this case took 12 years to get judgment, this itself is a mockery of justice.”
He continued to explain the errors in the prosecution, “Additional charges from UAPA was put on them, and a secondary officer from home ministry granted the sanctions, it was in conflict with sec 45 of the said Act which states that order for the prosecution in this Act should be granted by the highest officer in the state govt. even police had failed to prove in the court that the posters presented by them were the one pasted by SIMI members and all the witnesses of the prosecution went hostile.”
Muneer Deshmuk former National General Secretary of SIMI was one among the six persons who got acquitted. Others are Arshad Bilgrami, Khalid Nayeem, Abdul Razzaq, Mohammad Aleem, and Sohrab
Ahmad.
After getting acquitted Arshad Bilgrami is now having something to cheer for, because just five days before this acquittal, he was convicted in same kind of case registered in different police station. The irony of this poster case is that different police stations have registered cases on the same kind of poster which resulted in the agony of fighting same kind of cases again and again.
Arshad told TCN, “I am obviously delighted on getting acquitted; this case was built against us in
October of 2000, from then on I was facing continuous harassment by the police, I even spent 2 months in jail for this very case, now after 12 years I am being declared innocent.”
But he also said that after this judgment he is confused and compelled to think where the judiciary of this country is moving. He said, “On July th I got convicted in a similar case, the poster presented by the police was same, even the witnesses were same as of the case in which I was acquitted on July 10th. There can’t be two different judgments for the same case, either I am guilty or innocent, judiciary cannot hang me in between. This makes me believe that there are some elements in judiciary which is working under pressure. But still this 10th July judgment has boosted my hope, and we will challenge the July 5th judgment in the higher court, let the highest judiciary decide which judgment was right, based on the pressure from outside or based on the facts and law of the land.”
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Terror stories from Madhya Pradesh