By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Mumbai: City’s crime branch received a setback when a local esplanade court in the city acquitted all five persons who were arrested soon after serial blasts in Mumbai’s local trains in July 2006.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Mahesh R. Natu on Tuesday held that the crime branch failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt and acquitted Irfan Sayed, Najeeb Bakkali, Firoz Ghaswala, Mohammed Ali Cheepa and Imran Ansari.
In its crack down after serial blasts, Crime branch had arrested these persons for being members of banned organisation SIMI and alleged them to be involved in unlawful activities.
Court examined total eleven witnesses and acquitted all accused due to lack of evidences to prove their association with banned organization and their indulgence in any unlawful activities.
After acquittal, defence lawyers Ishrat Ali Khan, Tahwar Khan Pathan, Jamal Khan, Satyaram Gaud and Aftab Qureshi claimed that the police falsely implicated these men and planted articles that were shown to have been seized from the accused.
Speaking with TwoCircles.net, Advocate Tahiwar Pathan who represented accused said, “It was a false case, these persons were never involved in any unlawful activities. We argued on some of the technical faults in the case and obtained their acquittal”.
Elaborating the technical error that he pointed to court, he said, “Sections of UAPA requires sanction from central government for prosecution of accused and this sanction was missing in this case, they (police) had secured this sanction from state government and not the central government.”
Maulana Nadeem Siddique, secretary of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, Maharashtra (Mahmood Madni group), expressed satisfaction over the acquittals and said, “This increases our resolve to continue to defend falsely implicated Muslim people in terrorism cases”.