By Kanu Sarda, IANS,
New Delhi : While security officials are scrambling to identify the terrorists behind Saturday’s serial blasts in New Delhi that claimed 24 lives, five men accused of the 2005 bombings here are still absconding while the trial of the five arrested is pending a city court.
At least 60 people were killed and over 100 injured in the multiple blasts in Sarojini Nagar, Paharganj and Govindpuri on Oct 29, 2005. Ten men with links to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist group were accused of the bombings.
However, five of them – identified as Abu-Al-Kama, Abu-Afza, Shajid Ali, Jehad and Rashid – are still at large three years after the terror attacks.
While the police managed to arrest the other five, their trial is pending in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Babulal. The court started recording the statements of the witnesses in August this year.
The court is presently hearing the case against Tariq Ahmed Dar, the alleged mastermind of the bombings. Along with Dar, Mohammed Rafiq Shah, Mohammed Hussain Fazli, Farooq Ahmed Batloo and Ghulam Ahmed Khan have been booked under various sections of the explosives act as well as for criminal conspiracy, murder and attempt to murder.
Legal experts say that although the case has been taken up, it will take another three years at least for the court to deliver its final decision.
“Our judicial system is so pathetic that cases take years to reach its conclusion and victims suffer as they fight the cases,” Indu, who lost her brother, sister-in-law and niece in the 2005 blasts, told IANS.
The court had so far recorded the statement of Kuldeep Singh, a Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) driver who had thrown the bag containing the bomb out of the bus at Govindpuri in south Delhi and saved many lives. He lost his eyesight in the blast.
Besides Kuldeep Singh, bus conductor Budh Prakash, bus depot manager S.K. Chillara and DTC engineer Balbir Singh deposed before the court and narrated the incidents leading up to the bomb blast.
The court also recorded the statement of a forensic expert and deposed that Dar’s voice samples matched with recorded telephonic conversations in which he allegedly told his bosses outside the country about the success of the terror strike.
Forensic expert D.K. Sanwar, testifying as prosecution witness, said the voice on the cassettes provided by the police and the samples have matched.