New Delhi: A suspected Pakistan-trained militant, arrested in 2008 for allegedly planning a strike in the city, has been let off by a Delhi court, which found fault with the police probe and raised doubts over the authenticity of the intelligence information on which he was nabbed.
Additional sessions judge Pawan Kumar Jain acquitted suspected Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) militant Abdur Rehman of charges of being found in possession of explosives, saying, "I am of considered opinion that the prosecution has failed to prove the guilt of the accused beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt."
Rehman, absolved of charges under the Explosive Act, had already been acquitted by another court in January last year of various offences under anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the penal offence of waging war against the country.
Acting on an intelligence tip-off that a Pakistan-trained militant was on his way to Delhi for a terror strike here, the Special Cell of Delhi Police arrested Rehman at New Delhi railway station on May 21, 2008, minutes after he arrived here from Howrah.
But the court let him off doubting the authenticity of the very information and noted that the so-called secret information was not even recorded anywhere.
"It is difficult to digest that police officers do not record the secret information anywhere but remember it so well that they can reproduce it even after a period of three years as happened in this case," the court said.
In its chargesheet, the police claimed at Rehman's instance, it had recovered three kgs of RDX, detonators and timers, buried near a mosque at Janakpuri in West Delhi. It had also said he had received the explosives and other contrabands from one Guru, an active HuJI module in Delhi in 2007.
The court, however, rejected this claim as well saying Guru was never arrested by the police, which did not even submit to the court his sketch that, it claimed, it had circulated for his arrest.
Doubting the very existence of Guru, the court said, "If there was no Guru, where was the question of receiving detonators from him."
The explosives appeared to have been buried in 2007 but there was no evidence to show that Rehman was in Delhi during that period, said the court, adding that the police did not probe if Rehman ever worked in the mosque.
The court also said "it might be possible that alleged Guru might have buried the explosives and accused Rehman came to know about it. He cannot be said to be in its conscious possession of explosive, if so", adding that the police handled the material recovered without gloves and the recovery was not even video-graphed.
After Rehman's arrest, police had claimed that a Bangladesh-based HuJI 'commander' Qamar alias Nata had earlier plotted to trigger blast in Delhi through Pakistan-trained LeT militants.
The police had attributed this information about Nata to interrogation of one Jalaluddin, arrested by Uttar Pradesh Police in connection with the Varanasi blasts. Jalaluddin had also stated that Qamar had asked Rehman to carry out blasts in Delhi.
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