A Special TADA court in Gujarat’s Porbandar district on Tuesday acquitted former MLA Bhura Munja Jadeja and five others in the 1993 arms haul case for lack of mandatory sanctions and evidence.
The court observed that the police authorities had not obtained sanctions under section 20A (1) and 20A (2) of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act required before lodging an FIR and filing the case chargesheet respectively.
The court noted that from the evidence on record, the offence under TADA was registered before the grant of sanctions by the higher authority. Similarly, “there was no previous sanction at the time of filing the charge sheet,” the order states.
According to the prosecution’s case, Jadeja was operating a criminal gang and had obtained various arms and ammunition, which he distributed to other gang members. The Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad conducted a raid on a house in Porbandar and recovered Italian-made pistols and cartridges, and six shotguns from a field of one of the accused persons.
Terming the evidence of police witnesses as “baseless oral allegations”, the court observed, “There is not a single piece of evidence, which suggests that any of the accused has used such weapons to commit any offence. There is no evidence regarding intention of the accused to strike terror in the people.
