Dr Shahid Badr Falahi was the chief of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) at the time of its ban in 2001.
By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
New Delhi: Dr Shahid Badr Falahi, former chief of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), was acquitted on Thursday by a Delhi court in a 14-year-old case.
“I am vindicated and relieved,” Dr Falahi said after the verdict.
Sanjay Khanagwal, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of the Patiala House court, acquitted Dr Falahi in the case related to “promoting enmity between different groups and publishing ‘objectionable’ materials.”
Dr Shahid Badr Falahi (TCN file photo)
Dr Falahi was charged under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc. and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration) and 505 (making, publishing or circulating any statement, rumour or report conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code. Section 124A (pertaining to sedition) too was imposed on Dr Falahi, but a sessions judge had discharged him on that count during the charge framing process in December 2002.
The case against Dr Falahi – a medical graduate from the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), he is a Unani practitioner at Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh – was filed on May 19, 2001 for allegedly pasting a sticker having provocative content on a wall of the Jamia Milia Islamia. SIMI was banned later in the same year, in September 2001. Prosecution had claimed that the sticker was pasted on January 10. He was already lodged in Tihar Jail in connection with another case when the police made the only arrest in this case.
“I feel vindicated and relived. Police had filed four cases against me and falsely implicated me. I have been acquitted in three of them,” Dr Falahi told TwoCircles.net.
“I am hopeful, I shall soon be acquitted in the remaining case too. This is the case where I was accused of giving an inflammatory speech at Zakir Nagar in front of a crowd of 5,000. But all 10 witnesses that the prosecution produced are police personnel,” he added.
Advocate Humam Ahmed Siddiqui, his counsel in the case, told TCN, “We have not got the full judgment yet but the honourable court accepted that the prosecution has failed to establish any link between the accused and the alleged event,” adding, “It was clearly a false case.”
Falahi was arrested on September 2001 in another case by Delhi Police, which took his custody in the present case in October 2001 and filed a charge sheet in December 2001.
In December 2002, a sessions court discharged him of the offence dealing with sedition but framed other charges including promoting enmity between different groups. He was later released on bail.
Founded in 1977, the SIMI has been banned since 2001, and in February 2014 this was extended for five more years.
(With Inputs from IANS)