Five years after being arrested on terror charges,two men,who police claimed were Hizbul Mujahideen members,have been acquitted by a city court. The charges against Javed Ahmed Tantray and Ashiq Ali Bhatt were dismissed by a sessions court on Thursday with the judge saying it was a clear-cut plant case by the Special Cell. The verdict,scheduled to be delivered on August 13,was delayed for over a month by the move to transfer the case to a special court in Patiala House. In response to a writ petition,the Delhi High Court had directed that the case not be transferred and asked the sessions court to deliver the judgment. Tantray and Bhatt were arrested on August 6,2009,from Daryaganj and police claimed they recovered two AK-47 rifles,two pairs of loaded magazines and two hand grenades from their car. The Special Cell had declared the arrests a successful mission averting a national crisis on Independence Day. According to the prosecutions case,the duo drove to Delhi from Jammu in a stolen Santro. They were on a special assignment to carry out suicide attacks in crowded places in Delhi. The defence,however,claimed that the stolen Santro was planted by police. Toll receipts revealed that the car was driven from Delhi to Jammu on the morning of August 6,2009. It is the police who took the vehicle to Jammu in the morning and brought it back to Delhi in the evening, the defence submitted to the court. The story pieced together by Special Cell after the arrest and interrogation is as follows: Tantray hailed from Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir and had joined Hizbul in 1997. He was trained at the Leepa camp office of the Hizbul. Bhatt had joined Hizbul in 2003 and was trained in Kathua. Both did their arms training in terror camps in Boi and Mansura in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. They met Hizbul chief Peer Sayed Salauddin and deputy chief Khalid Saifullah at a Hizbul camp where they were told that they would be sent on a special assignment to India. They reached India via Nepal. An unidentified man received them in Kathmandu and took them to Pokhara. Later,they reached Gorakhpur in UP. On August 3,they boarded a train to Jammu. In Jammu,they contacted one Faiyaz who arranged a car for them to travel to Delhi. After reaching Delhi,Tantray parked the car opposite Mahavir Vatika,Daryaganj,and went to a STD booth to contact Shahid,their associate in Pakistan. Following a tip-off,police stationed in the Jama Masjid area arrested Tantray when he was reversing his car. Pointing to loopholes in the investigation,the defence submitted to the court that the police had submitted no material to show any connection of the accused persons with any terror organisations. No diary entry was made in the local police station regarding the operation; there were inconsistencies in the testimony of the prosecution witnesses,one of whom also failed to identify the accused in court. Police had made no investigation regarding the alleged call made by Tantray to his associate in Pakistan,the defence alleged. The entire story of the prosecution is fabricated and they have falsely implicated the accused to gain publicity and out-of-turn promotion, the defence told the court.
