NEW DELHI, Aug 4: A Kashmiri youth was sentenced to death, his cousin given a 10-year prison term while two others, including Delhi lecturer Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, were acquitted by India’s Supreme Court on Thursday in a controversial trial for the December 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.
“I have no personal animus against any of the policemen, judges or jail authorities that have been the cause of my suffering,” Mr Geelani told a crowded news conference hours after a two-judge bench of the top court confirmed his earlier acquittal by the High Court.
“I believe they are all part of the system that has been responsible for the pain and grief of many Kashmiris,” the popular Kashmiri teacher of Arabic said. “I have not suffered any more than other Kashmiri men have in my generation.”
The badly botched copycat attack on the British-built parliament house, within three months of the 9/11 assault in New York, has been questioned by human rights activists, who feel all the facts in the case are not yet known. But the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the death penalty on alleged Jaish-i-Mohhammad militant Mohammad Afzal while reducing it in the case of his cousin Shaukat Hussain Guru to 10 years imprisonment from capital punishment.
It also endorsed the acquittal of Shaukat’s wife Afsan Guru and Mr Geelani. In its 271-page judgement on cross appeals filed by the Delhi Police, Afzal and Shaukat, a Bench comprising Justice P.V. Reddi and Justice P P Naolekar said there was no direct evidence to convict Mr Geelani in the case.
The trial court had awarded death penalty to Messrs. Shaukat, Afzal and Geelani while sentencing Afsan to five years imprisonment for their role in the December 13, 2001, attack on Parliament which had led to mobilisation of troops on the India-Pakistan border. The Delhi High Court had upheld the death penalty on Afzal and Shaukat under Sections 302 (murder), 121 (waging war against the nation) and Sections 3(2) and 4 of anti-terrorist POTA law. It had acquitted both Geelani and Afsan.
Terming the attack on Parliament an unparalled assault on the supreme seat of democracy, Justice Reddi, pronouncing the verdict for the Bench in a jam-packed court, said there was clinching evidence against Afzal regarding his nexus with the five slain terrorists who carried out the “terrorist act of most diabolical nature”.
Afzal’s wife says her hsuband made a confessional statement before the media under pressure from the police, who had threatened to harm the family. Mr Geelani said it was curious that no one in the media had bothered to identify the dead men and their families, who the Indian government says were Pakistanis.
