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Letters

An Inhuman Act

Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee (CLMC) strongly condemns verdict of the special trial court of Hyderabad for awarding capital punishment to two youths and life imprisonment to one youth in twin blast cases.

CLMC has denounced this judgement and termed it as unfair which violates the rules laid down for a free and fair trial. It should be noted that the trial took place in the four walls of prison and counter-intelligence was used to influence the court. Today's court verdict clearly reflects that there is double standard in lower judicial institutions.

To prosecute innocent Muslims in malicious terror conspiracy cases and not providing them a fair and just trial and sending them to the gallows have become a routine practice in India. In this twin blast cases the OCTOPUS team used the innocent youths arrested by the Maharashtra ATS as scapegoats, and by branding these men as Indian Mujahideen operatives they blocked any kind of appropriate legal aid to the Accused, they were even not allowed access to their legal counsels because of hostile Jail atmosphere. Furthermore due to the conduction of trial in the four walls of prison faraway in the suburbs of the Hyderabad city resulted in giving a natural edge to the prosecution, wherein the witnesses were tutored and pressurised without any monitoring and the defence counsel had to face hurdles and hardships conducting trial in a hostile environment. As such under these circumstances free trial was hard to come by and the justice became a distant dream as it has been proved.

There is a large section of society which believes that this verdict has been made under political pressure with elections just round the corner. The Civil society at large is shocked that Accused in Mecca Masjid blast case like Swami Aseernanand and his associates in spite of confessing on his crime walked free whereas these Muslim youths accused in twin blast cases against whom there is no crucial or direct evidence was found have been sent to the gallows.

Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee expressing its deepest concern on the sorry state of affairs demands that justice need to be done to the victims of the blast and the innocent persons implicated in the blast case. By sending innocent persons to gallows justice cannot be served to the victims and their families of the twin blasts. CLMC demands that death penalty in principle should be abolished which is not a form of punishment, but an inhuman act.

Lateef Mohd Khan,
General Secretary, CLMC, Hyderabad

Frontier
Vol. 51, No.12, Sep 23 - 29, 2018