A Pakistani woman has filed an appeal in the Punjab and Haryana High Court against the acquittal of all accused, including former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) member Aseemanand, in the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast case.
Sixty-eight people, including 10 Indians, were killed in the terror attack.
The accused were acquitted by a special NIA court in Panchkula on March 20. The court had said: “NIA miserably failed to prove the charges framed against the accused.”
The appellant Rahila Wakil, 35, is the daughter of Mohammad Vakil, a Pakistani who was killed in the attack on the Samjhauta Express near Panipat, when the train was on its way from Delhi to Lahore.
Ms. Wakil filed the appeal through her maternal uncle Mahroof, a resident of Shamli in Uttar Pradesh.
Her counsel Momin Malik said his client was not given a visa to visit India so she filed the appeal through “power of attorney.”
The appeal has been filed against State of Haryana, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the accquitted men- Aseemanand, Ramchandra Kalsangra, Sandeep Dange, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan, Amit Chouhan and Rajendar Chowdhury.
“Other than Pakistanis, ten Indians including government servants were also killed in the Samjhauta terror attack. Persons affected by the bomb blast can file an appeal against the acquittals in a higher court. since Ms. Wakil was not given visa by the Indian High Commission in Pakistan, I filed it on her behalf,” Mr. Malik said.
NIA did not file an appeal against the acquittals.
On Wednesday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Rajya Sabha defended the decision not to file an appeal against the acquittals stating that the “chargesheets filed under the UPA regime did not have any substantial proof.” Mr. Shah alleged that the “case had been instituted with a political motive.”
Special Court judge Jagdeep Singh while acquittting the accused said that he had to “conclude this judgment with deep pain and anguish as a dastardly act of violence remained unpunished for want of credible and admissible evidence.”
Several witnesses in the case turned hostile.
“There are gaping holes in the prosecution evidence and an act of terrorism has remained unsolved. Terrorism has no religion because no religion in the world preaches violence. A Court of Law is not supposed to proceed on popular or predominant public perception or the political discourse of the day and ultimately it has to appreciate the evidence on record,” the court had said.
