A court on Thursday acquitted 10 persons for lack of evidence in a case of bomb blast nearly 12 years ago at Hyderabad police’s Task Force office in the city, in which a home guard was killed.
T Srinivas Rao, judge of the seventh additional metropolitan sessions court here, absolved the accused, nine of whom were in jail. A Bangladeshi bomber had walked into the Task Force office located in Greenlands area here on October 12, 2005 and detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), killing the home guard and himself. A special investigation team (SIT) of the Central Crime Station conducted an inquiry and suspected the role of an international terror organisation in the blast.
The investigating team later filed a charge sheet and named a total of 20 persons in it. The SIT arrested 10 persons and claimed that three other accused died in different incidents and the remaining seven were absconding. The counsel representing six of the 10 arrested accused, Mohammed Abdul Azeem, told PTI that while one of the 10 arrested men got bail, the other nine were still in prison.
When contacted, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanty said they will study the court order and then decide whether to go for an appeal against the judgement.
Reacting to the judgement, MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi in questioned whether the the investigating officers will be made accountable. “In the 2005 Hyd task (force) office bomb Blast( case, police couldn’t prove conspiracy , but the accused lost 10 years of their lives languishing in jails,” Owaisi tweeted.
2005 Hyderabad Task Force Bomb Blast all 10 accused exonerated by court,explosive substance found at site & produced by pros didn't match
— Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) August 10, 2017
2005 hyd Task office Bomb Blast police couldn't prove conspiracy but the accused lost 10 years of their lives languishing in jail
— Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) August 10, 2017
2005 Hyd TF office Blast will the Investigation officers be made accountable & great work Advocate Azeem & Uma Maheshwar & Rafat saheb
— Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) August 10, 2017
The SIT filed the chargesheet in 2006. Seven of the nine accused, who were lodged in the Chanchalguda jail, were released late Thursday.
Two of those acquitted are also made accused in 2005 Jaunpur Shramajeevi Express blast case. They will be transferred to Jaunpur prison in Uttar Pradesh, reported Times of India.
There have been several instances of Muslims being wrongly implicated in terror related charges in the past. In some cases, the innocent Muslims have had to spend more than 20 years in jail for the crime they never committed, thereby posing serious questions to the integrity off the law enforcing and intelligence agencies.
The recent developments related to he acquittal of innocent Muslims have also brought the efficiency of the judiciary under spotlight.
(With PTI inputs)