NIA Court Awards Death Penalty To 7 Terrorists In Ujjain-Bhopal Train Blast, Allahabad HC Confirms

The Special NIA court of Lucknow has recently awarded death penalty to the 7 alleged ISIS operatives in the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train blast case where 9 people got seriously injured.

Another accused in the 2017 case was awarded life imprisonment.

Those who were awarded death sentence included convicts Mohd Faisal, Gaus Mohd Khan, Mohd Azhar, Atiq Muzaffer, Mohd Danish, Mohd Sayyed Meer Hussain and Asif Iqbal alias Rokey. Mohd Atif alias Asif Irani was given life imprisonment.

While pronouncing death sentence, Judge VS Tripathi observed that case fell in the arrest of the rare category where such convicts were entitled to the severest punishment.

The court convicted the accused on February 24 and fixed Tuesday for pronouncement of its verdict. Later, found the accused guilty under sections 121, 121A, 122, 123 of IPC, sections 17, 18, 18A, 18B, 23, 38 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and 3/25/35 of the Arms Act.

On quantum of sentence, the convicts had pleaded that they had already been in jail for over 5 years and as such the court must show mercy in awarding sentence to them.

While rejecting the plea of convicts, the court stated that the convicts waged war against the country and hence they were not entitled to any leniency.

The Allahabad High Court confirmed death penalty for the capital sentence as it is the law that the death penalty can be executed only after confirmation by the High Court.

According to special public prosecutors, MK Singh and KK Sharma, an FIR was registered in the case with ATS police station in Lucknow on March 8, 2017.

The ATS received information that members of banned terror outfit ISIS were planning to conduct blasts at different places in the country.

The ATS’ Kanpur unit first arrested Mohd Faisal and later on other accused were also nabbed. The state counsel said that the accused had conducted a test blast at Ganga Ghat in Unnao.

According to the probe finding, it came out that the accused had planted a bomb on Kanpur-Unnao railway track. They also planted bombs at different places during Dussehra. The accused wanted to go to Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan and Mumbai through Pakistan and Afghanistan to commit act of terrorism.

The charge sheet was filed in the case on August 31, 2017.

Previously in the charge sheet, one more accused, Saifullah, was named but he was killed in an encounter in Dubagga area of Lucknow.