The Madras High Court has directed a sessions court for exclusive trial of bomb blast cases at Poonamallee near here to complete within six months the trial in a case probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) relating to the alleged conspiracy hatched by a group of people to cause an explosion on the campus of the U.S. Consulate here at the instance of two officials serving in the High Commission of Pakistan in Sri Lanka.
A Division Bench of Justices C.T. Selvam and N. Sathish Kumar passed the order on a criminal appeal preferred by one of the accused F. Mohammed Saleem, a businessman from Royapuram here.
The appellant challenged an order passed by the sessions court, which was also designated as a special court for NIA cases, on November 4, 2017 denying bail to him, though he was under judicial custody for more than three years.
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However, when the matter was heard, the appellant’s counsel C. Vijayakumar agreed to withdraw the appeal and requested the court to order early completion of trial proceedings.
Chargesheet filed
NIA Special Public Prosecutor R. Karthikeyan said the investigating agency had already filed a chargesheet against the prime accused and the examination of the first prosecution witness in the case was slated to begin on February 22.
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After recording their submissions, the judges said: “This court directs the learned Sessions Judge, Sessions Court for Exclusive Trial of Bomb Blast Cases... to dispose of the case as expeditiously as possible, in any event within a period of six months from the date of receipt of this order.”
Initially, it was the ‘Q’ branch CID which unearthed the conspiracy after arresting the first accused M. Muhammed Sakir Hussein, a Sri Lankan national, here on April 28, 2014.
On June 18, 2014, the case was transferred to NIA in view of the gravity of the offence. Investigations conducted by it revealed that Hussein had been engaged by the second accused Amir Zubair Siddique and the third accused Boss alias Shah, both serving in the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo. They initially asked Hussein to gather information about security arrangements at places such as the Chennai port and naval bases at Kochi and Vishakapatnam.
The trio had held several meetings in the High Commission as well as in private hotels in Colombo.
Hussein was paid money at regular intervals for providing materials such as photographs of the US Consulate here and was sent to Bangkok too in October 2013 to meet a Pakistani national whom he was supposed to take to India with the help of fake documents for causing explosions at the US Consulate in Chennai apart from the Israel Consulate as well as Electronic City in Bengaluru. After his return to Chennai, arrangements were made to pay fake currency notes for ₹ 3 lakh to Hussein.