HC to hear Lajpat Nagar blast case

NEW DELHI: A day after the Batla House encounter anniversary, the focus will remain on terrorism as the Delhi high court is slated to begin hearings into the Lajpat Nagar blast case of 1996.
A division bench of Justices Ravindra S Bhat and G P Mittal is expected to take up the appeals of the six convicted members of the militant outfit Jammu Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF).Three of them are on death row for the blast in the crowded Lajpat Nagar market that killed 13 people.
The prosecution will initiate arguments and the case may be taken up on a day-to-day basis as it involves an appeal against capital punishment. One of the oldest pending blast cases in the capital, the trial court had termed the crime as a "dastardly" act that fell under the "rarest of rare" category.
Three of the accused, Mohd Naushad, Mohd Ali Bhatt and Mirza Nissar Hussain, have been awarded death penalty. Co-accused Javed Ahmed Khan, held guilty of serious offences of murder, conspiracy and attempt to murder under the IPC, has got a life term while Farooq Ahmed Khan and Farida Dar, held guilty under milder penal provisions, have been acquitted.
Ten people had faced trial in the case. According to the prosecution, the accused were arrested soon after the incident after police had allegedly tracked the calls made by them to various media houses, claiming responsibility for the terror attack.
Those facing trial on various charges, including criminal conspiracy and murder, were Farooq Ahmed Khan, Mohd Naushad, Mirza Iftikhar, Mohd Ali Bhatt, Mirza Nissar Hussain, Latif Ahmed Waza, Syed Maqbool Shah, Javed Ahmed Khan and Abdul Gani and their woman associate Farida Dar.
"The convicts had no apparent justification or motive to take the lives of innocent citizens. The deceased persons or victims were not at all responsible for any grievances of the convicts towards the society or the government," the sessions court had observed in its order.
As per the defence lawyers, their clients had been framed in the case as the police planted arms and ammunition and explosives on them to claim recovery from different places in J&K. They have questioned the evidence that can be gleaned from the recoveries, accusing the agencies of keeping the accused in illegal custody even before the blast took place.