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Attack on Parliament : Death sentence for Jaish militant confirmed |
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The Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence given to Jaish-e-Mohammed militant Mohd. Afzal, found guilty of the December 13, 2001 attack on Parliament. But the court converted the capital punishment given to his cousin, Shaukat Hussain, to ten years rigorous imprisonment. He was found guilty of concealing the conspiracy. The court upheld the acquittal of S.A.R. Geelani, a college lecturer, in the absence of substantive evidence against him. But it observed that there is serious suspicion about his conduct in the whole episode, saying that he seems to have approved the attack on Parliament.
A Bench of Justice P.V. Reddi and Justice P.P. Naolekar while rejecting the confessions of Afzal and Shaukat as evidence under POTA for reasons that they were not given sufficient time to make up their mind before recording of the same by a Magistrate, also upheld the Delhi High Court order of October 29, 2003, acquitting Shaukat’s wife Navjot Sandhu alias Afsan, who was sentenced to five years imprisonment by the trial court.
The trial court on December 18, 2002, awarded death penalty to Afzal, Shaukat and Geelani, while sentencing Afsan Guru to five-year imprisonment. On appeal, the High Court on October 29, 2003, upheld the death penalty to Afzal and Shaukat under Section 302 (murder) and 121 (waging war against the nation) of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 3(2) and 4 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, but acquitted Geelani and Afsan Guru. While Afzal and Shaukat filed appeals in the apex court against the death sentence, the Delhi police appealed against the acquittal of Geelani and Afsan Guru.
Disposing of all appeals, the Bench upheld the death sentence to Afzal, saying there was not a shred of doubt about his complicity in the hatching of the criminal plot to attack Parliament.
Five Pakistani militants - Mohammed, Haider, Hamza, Rana and Raja - attacked Parliament and were killed by security personnel. Nine security personnel were also killed and 16 others injured in the encounter.
The apex court, in its 271-page judgment, described the attack as a grave crime of enormous severity and said it was a classic case of the “rarest of rare cases”. The court said, “The collective conscience of society will be satisfied only if death penalty is awarded to Mohd. Afzal.” The judges said thee was clinching evidence of his nexus with the slain terrorists.
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