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Friday, Aug 12, 2005

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Parliament attack: call for probe to determine truth

Staff Correspondent

Implications of Supreme Court judgment

NEW DELHI: Saying that there has been no attempt so far to properly identify the persons responsible for the attack on Parliament, members of the Committee of Inquiry on the December 13 attack have demanded an in-depth parliamentary inquiry into the attack. Citing the recent Supreme Court judgment on the attack on Parliament, Nirmalangshu Mukherji, member of the Committee, said that since the court had set aside Mohammad Afzal's confessional statement, it left no answers to the identity of those behind the attack. Mr. Mukherji said that the Supreme Court, while acquitting three of the four persons charged with conspiracy, said the manner and circumstances in which their confessions were obtained, made them unreliable. He said that though the Supreme Court acquitted S.A.R. Geelani and Afsan Guru of charges of conspiracy, the court had convicted Shaukat Hussain of an entirely new charge of concealing knowledge of the conspiracy. Stressing that the Supreme Court's remarks about Geelani were entirely unjustified, Prashant Bhushan, advocate, said that the media had wrongly projected Geelani's acquittal as based on a technicality.

The Committee asked how the Jammu and Kashmir Special Task Force could have been unaware of a conspiracy planned by a surrendered militant (Afzal), who was supposed to have been under their surveillance. Alleging that it is now clear that the Special Cell of the Delhi police tried to frame at least three innocent people, the Committee demanded that the methods of the Special Cell should be investigated and it should be made accountable. The Committee raised the unsolved question of press reports from Thane which claimed that four terrorists, including a person called Hamza (the same name as one of the terrorists killed in the parliament attacks, identified by Afzal) had been arrested by the Thane police in November 2000 and handed over to the J&K police for further investigation.

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