Court lets off 3 alleged LeT operatives

Additional Sessions Judge Savita Rao acquitted Mohammad Hasan alias Abu Qasim of Pakistan and Shafqat Iqbal Mir and Shabbir Ahmed of Doda in Jammu and Kashmir, saying the prosecution has failed to prove its charges against them.

The court, however, held Pakistani national guilty of enetring and staying in India illegally. He is to be sentenced next week.

The trio had been arrested in 2007 from outside a tourist destination here.

The police had claimed it had arrested them in April 2007 from outside Dilli Haat in south Delhi while they were exchanging bags of explosives.

All the three had been booked for waging war against the country under the Indian Penal Code and also under the Explosive Substances Act.

 

The prosecution had claimed the three had been asked to target the celebrations organised in the Capital to mark the 150th anniversary of the First War of Independence.

Their counsel M S Khan had argued the police could not prove that they were LeT operatives and were here to carry out strikes.

The court also noted that the investigating agency had failed to produce before it the hand grenades alleged to have been recovered from the trio.

Khan had also argued that the police had failed to prove its case that the trio were in touch with Abu Alqama, the LeT chief of operations in India.