The National Investigation Agency (NIA) plans to move the Supreme Court against the Kerala high court’s acquittal of the accused in the 2006 Kozhikode twin blasts case and observations against the agency, said an official.
The NIA charge-sheeted seven accused in 2010 and another was killed in Jammu and Kashmir. Two accused are still at large and a trial court acquitted as many.
The trial court convicted Thadiyantavida Nazeer, who was arrested from a village along the India-Bangladesh border in 2009, and S Shafaz and awarded them double life term in 2013.This was the first case the NIA took over in Kerala.
A division bench of Justices K Vinod Chandran and Ziyad Rahman acquitted the two and dismissed an appeal challenging the acquittal of two other accused earlier, Abdul Halim and Abubacker Yousef. “There is no reliable evidence on the preparation or commission of the crime that incriminates the accused beyond a reasonable doubt,” the court observed in a 101-page verdict.
The court said the agency failed to discover anything related to the crime. The approver in the case is not a reliable witness and his role in the crime is very suspect and cannot be believed, it added.
The court observed the investigators were groping in the dark for almost four years until the third accused confessed about his role after being arrested in another blast case. One of the accused in the case turned approver during the trial and the court found that the case was built on his disclosures.
“In the present case, there is no lengthy statement, but the disclosure record confession linking the accused with the crime so unabashedly that none could escape innuendo. This is flagrant violation of Section 25 and 26 of the Evidences Act and tends to impress upon the court the need to convict, even without proof beyond reasonable doubt,” said the court.
The agency said the first and third accused carried out “two experimental blasts” on a beach in the city earlier but there was no discovery of material objects from the site.
After planting two low-intensity bombs, the accused were said to have informed the district collector and media about them. Two people including a policeman were injured when one of the bombs went off. Initially, the case was investigated by the state police but later handed over to the NIA. The NIA said blasts were carried out by the accused to protest the denial of bail to the accused in a communal riot case.
