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Death for 3 in Lajpat Nagar blast case

Ashok Kumar

Unprovoked killing of innocent persons; convicts don't deserve leniency: court

— PHOTO: PTI/MANVENDER VASHIST

JUDGMENT DAY:Security personnel escorting Jammu Kashmir Islamic Front members Mohammed Naushad, Mohammed Ali Bhatt and Mirza Nissar Hussain out of a Delhi court on Thursday after they were awarded death sentence in the 1996 Lajpat Nagar blast case.

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Thursday awarded the death penalty to three of the six members of the banned terrorist outfit, the Jammu Kashmir Islamic Front, who had been convicted of involvement in the May 21, 1996 Lajpat Nagar bomb blast, in which 13 people were killed.

District and Sessions Judge S. P. Garg, who awarded the death sentence to Mohd. Naushad, Mohd. Ali Bhatt and Mirza Nissar Hussain, said: “The convicts do not deserve a lenient view. It was the most dastardly act ... the convicts indulged in the killing of innocent persons without any provocation.”

Their accomplice Javed Ahmed Khan was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The four were convicted on April 8 of the murder, conspiracy and attempt to murder under the Indian Penal Code.

Jail term for two

The other two, Farooq Ahmed Khan and his woman accomplice Farida Dar, who had been held guilty of minor offences under the Explosive Substances Act and the Arms Act, were sentenced to imprisonment for seven years, and four years and two months respectively.

The court also imposed fine on the convicts.

The judge cited various Supreme Court judgments to justify the death penalty. “The gravity of the crime conceived by the convicts with the potential of causing enormous casualties as well as disrupting normal life of the people is something which cannot be described in words. The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, has shaken the entire city and the collective conscience of society.”

The court said: “The convicts had no apparent justification or motive to take the lives of innocent citizens. The deceased persons or [other] victims were not at all responsible for any grievance of the convicts towards society or the government.”

Seventeen people, including underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, had been named in the charge sheet filed in connection with the blast at the Central Market, Lajpat Nagar. Of them six were never arrested and another person died.

Four of the 10 arrested — Mirza Iftikhar, Latif Ahmed Waza, Syed Maqbool Shah and Abdul Gani — were acquitted of all charges for want of evidence.

In convicting the remaining six accused, the court relied heavily on the confessional statement of Javed Ahmed Khan recorded by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate of Jaipur in 1996. The court, however, rapped the police for a “highly defective” probe and callous attitude.

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