Arrested, accused, acquitted

A group of teachers at Jamia Milia Islamia University has put together a compilation of terror cases that failed to hold up in court, all of these built by the Delhi Police Special Cell around youths they had arrested and described as terrorists.

Titled "Framed, Damned and Acquitted: Dossiers of a Very Special Cell" and compiled from court judgments and media reports, the study by the Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Association documents 16 such cases between 1992 and 2008. It notes that some of the accused languished in jail for years before courts acquitted them, citing lack of evidence or possible tampering of evidence.

Of the 16 cases, 11 involved Kashmiri youths. Here are these 11 cases, as documented in the study.

1 Accused: Tanveer Ahmad, Shakil Ahmad, Ishtiaq Akhtar Dar, Mohammad Akhtar Dar, Mohammad Yusuf Lone, Abdul Rauf, Ghulam Mohammad, declared arrested from Delhi on April 29, 1992.

Charge: They had allegedly made base in a Delhi house and were planning to use the owner's vehicles for attacks. Police claimed to have recovered photographs of prominent places targeted, arms and explosives.

How case fell apart: Dates didn't match. Rauf's wife had on April 26 moved the Meerut chief judicial magistrate about his arrest from Meerut. Ghulam Haider, owner of the Delhi house, testified that on April 25, he filed an application with Lajpat Nagar police and a habeas corpus petition about the arrest of Akhtar, Yusuf and Ghulam Mohammad. The court asked how applications could have been filed against the arrests in advance, discredited the "rest of the prosecution story" and acquitted all seven.

2 Accused: Farooq Ahmed and 16 others, arrested in May and June 1996, in connection with a May 21 blast in a car in Lajpat Nagar. Four were later acquitted:

Mirza Iftiqar Hussain, Latif Ahmed Waza, Syed Maqbool Shah, Abdul Gani

... contd.

ALSO READ

Pawar to seek special package for state

Verdict in Dec 16 rape case expected by month-end: Neeraj Kumar

China incursion: Both sides withdraw troops from Daulat Beg Oldi sector

Sonia Gandhi consults A K Antony on Pawan Bansal issue