By InidaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, 20 July 2014: Indian American Muslims have welcomed the recent Supreme Court verdict acquitting all 11 innocent people who were convicted by Gujarat court for carrying out bomb blasts in Surat city of the state in 1993. The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) has appealed to civil society to strive for reform in the police and judiciary of the country.
On Friday a bench of Justices T.S. Thakur and C. Nagappan acquitted 11 people who were convicted under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA) Act and given jail terms ranging from 10 to 20 years.
Two blasts had taken place in different location of Surat in January 1993 when the city was witnessing communal riots after the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya One school girl was killed and more than 30 persons injured in these blasts.
“The requirement of a mandatory statutory provision having been violated, the trial and conviction of the petitioners for offences under the (now repealed Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act) TADA must be held to have been vitiated on that account,” the SC noticed.
Earlier on May 16 this year, the apex court had acquitted all six accused in the Akshardham terror attack case of 2002. Some of the accused were given death sentence by lower court which was upheld by Gujarat High Court.
“The Surat and the Akshardham acquittals are indicative of the misery that befalls Muslims that fall prey to repressive law enforcement and corrupt state courts. Often they have to spend 10 to 20 years in prison, while the case winds its way through the maze of the Indian judiciary, before having their innocence finally upheld by the apex court,” said Ahsan Khan, President of IAMC.
“In the case of Khalid Mujahid and Mohammed Qateel, even the Supreme Court was unable to save them. Their lives were cruelly snuffed out, while in police custody or serving time in prison,” added Mr. Khan.
Khalid and Qateel were accused in different blast cases and killed in judicial custody in 2013 and 2012 in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra respectively.
