A Lucknow court on Thursday acquitted six suspected Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) terrorists for want of evidence ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. The acquittal comes eight years after they were arrested from different parts of Uttar Pradesh in June 2007.
The U.P. Special Task Force had claimed to have recovered one AK-47, several grenades and RDX from them. Of the six, Naushad belongs to Bijnore in U.P., the rest — Mohammad Ali Akbar Hussain, Shaikh Mukhtar Hussain, Azizurrahman Sardar, Noor Islam and Jalaluddin — are from West Bengal.
According to Mohammad Shoeb, counsel who represented the accused, the STF had claimed that the six men were “trained HuJI operatives” and were on their way to “carry out terror activities” in U.P.
The six were charged with waging war against India and sedition. But the court acquitted all the six saying that the prosecution failed to substantiate its claims “beyond reasonable doubt.”
The verdict comes two months after Mohammad Yaqoob, whom the U.P. STF claimed to be a fellow HuJI activist, was acquitted. Yaqoob, a resident of Bijnore, told The Hindu on phone that the acquittal of Jalaluddin and Naushad did not surprise him.
“Like them, even I was arrested in 2007 and I was tortured by the State STF in the Lucknow office, in order to force me to confess that I was a dreaded HuJI terrorist and Jalaluddin alias Babu Bhai and Naushad were my commanders,” he said.
