By IANS
Lucknow : A fast-track court in Lucknow Wednesday awarded life imprisonment to five people for conspiring to trigger blasts.
Mehboob Alam Mandal, Saeed Shoeb, Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Shaad and Farhan were awarded life sentences along with fines of Rs.40,000 each.
They were intercepted by the police while they were on their way from Kanpur to Lucknow on April 5, 2006 and charged for “conspiring to wage war against India”.
The police recovered one AK-47 rifle and a large quantity of RDX and detonators from the five men.
While two of them were local residents, three were from 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.
Subsequent investigations revealed their nexus with Waliullah, the key accused in the Varanasi terror blasts of March 2006 that left 20 people dead and over 100 wounded.
The synchronised blasts had targeted the Varanasi railway station and at the popular Sankat Mochan temple in the ancient Hindu pilgrim town.
Waliullah was facing trial in a court at Ghaziabad as lawyers in Varanasi had refused to allow counsel to defend him in the courts there.