In a setback to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Kerala high court on Thursday acquitted two prime accused in 2006 Kozhikode (north Kerala) twin blasts.
A trial court had sentenced the two, Thadiyantavida Nazeer and S Shafaz, to double life imprisonment in 2012.
A division bench of Justices Vinod K Chandran and Ziyad Rahman also dismissed the plea of the NIA questioning the acquittal of two other accused, Abdul Haleem and Abubaker Yousef, in the case.
Nazeer, once a reported protégé of jailed Muslim cleric Abdul Nassar Madani, later fell out with him and joined the Lakshar-e-Taiba and was the self-styled south Indian commander of the terror outfit. Allegedly involved in many cases, he was arrested from a village along the India-Bangladesh border in 2009.
The twin blasts took place in Kozhikode on March 3, 2006 at a private bus stand and the state road transport corporation terminal. After planting two low-intensity bombs, the accused later informed the district collector and media houses about them. Two people, including a policeman, were injured when one of the bombs went off while searching for them.
Initially the case was investigated by the state police but later handed over to the NIA. The NIA had charge-sheeted seven people in 2010 and one of the accused was later killed in an encounter with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Two accused are still at large.
The Special Court for NIA Cases had found both Nazeer and Shafas guilty of the offences under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967 (UAPA) and they were sentenced to imprisonment for life.
The court found that some of the corroborative evidences against accused were not strong and the prosecution failed to substantiate crime against them.
“We do understand the inherent difficulty of an investigation, in a case taken over by the NIA, almost four years after the incident. The Investigating Officers were groping in the dark for almost four years, till the arrest of third accused (A3) in another blast case,” the Court observed.
The court said it has dealt with each of the evidence tendered including the approver’s deposition as also the disclosure statements and the evidence of other witnesses to find that the case against A1 to A4 was not proved beyond reasonable doubt.
“The Investigators, we cannot but say, did not make a concerted effort to ‘go out in the sun’ to collect independent evidence of whatever version the accused told them….”
“In their anxiety to wrap up the case; we say anxiety since we do not think the Officers of the NIA would be ignorant of the law on the subject, they even recorded the confessions made by the accused, clearly inadmissible under Section 25 & 26 of the Evidence Act,” the court ruled.
According to the prosecution, nine accused including Nazeer and Shafas were alleged to have conspired, planned and executed the twin blasts, for reason of bail having been denied to the accused in the second Marad incident (communal riot case), in which 136 of the 142 accused remained imprisoned, as undertrials, for about four and a half years.
After the lower court verdict, both Nazeer and S Shafaz moved the high court saying that they were implicated by the NIA. Nazeer, undergoing jail in connection with Bengaluru stadium blast in Karnataka, appeared in person in the high court to argue his case.
