The National Human Rights Commission on Monday took suo motu cognizance of a media report carrying the story of Mohammad Amir, who was released in January after a 14-year-long incarceration in jail, destroying his youth due to wrongful arrest on 27th February1998, from Old Delhi as an alleged ‘terrorist’ when he had just turned 18.
While Amir remained confined to a solitary high security cell in Tihar Jail, he had little idea that his father had passed away in penury, and his mother had got paralysis suffering a brain haemorrhage and losing speech amidst a social boycott.
The Commission observed that the issue raises serious questions on the functioning of the police, and if true, the contents of the press report amount to grave violation of human rights of the victim Amir who was implicated in false cases. In the notices issued to the Secretary of Union Ministry of Home Affairs and Delhi Police Commissioner, under case no 1361/30/9/2014, Justice D. Murugesan, Member, NHRC, has asked them to submit detailed reports in the matter within four weeks.
Further, the Delhi Police Commissioner has been directed to submit the entire record of the 12 cases filed against Amir along with his report. According to the media report, carried on the 7th February 2014, Amir left his small home near Azad Market in Old Delhi for Pakistan on the 12th December 1997 to visit his sister who was married there and returned on the 13thFebruary, 1998.
A fortnight later, he was arrested on the charges of executing the bomb blasts subsequent to his training in Pakistan. Amir, with the charges of murder, terrorism and waging war against the nation, was named the main accused in 20 low intensity bomb blasts executed between December 1996 and October 1997 in Delhi, Rohtak, Sonepat and Ghaziabad.
Five of these explosions had occurred during a single evening in places as wide apart as Sadar Bazar in Delhi and Ghaziabad, many miles away. The charge sheet filed in April 1998 said that Amir had been trained in Pakistan by the dreaded Abdul Karim Tunda’s gang. It also mentioned that Amir and co-accused Shakeel collaborated to make bombs out of a factory rented by Shakeel in Pilakhua in Ghaziabad. However, Shakeel was discharged before the start of hearing in ten cases.
But in 2009 he was found hanging from the ceiling of his barrack in Dasna Jail. The then Superintendent of Dasna Jail, V.K. Singh, was charged with Shakeel’s murder. Amir was acquitted in 18 of the 20 terror cases for lack of evidence against him after the prosecution failed to produce a single witness in any of the cases connecting him to the blasts.
The police produced no witness to support the arrest, and the public witnesses, who were present during the Pilakhua raid, flatly refused to support the prosecution during the trial. Chandrabhan, the prosecution’s main witness on whose evidence the entire terror case rested stated that he had never seen Amir, and alleged that he was taken to the Chankya Puri Police Station where he was made to sign on blank papers. Reportedly, the trial court had acquitted Amir in 17 cases on the ground that ‘there is absolutely no incriminating evidence against the accused.’
The Delhi High Court in one of the three cases that went into appeal observed ‘the prosecution has miserably failed to produce any evidence to connect the accused appellant with the charges framed, much less prove them’. The trend points strongly to acquittal in the two remaining cases. (ANI)