Church blasts: HC wants SPP to show evidence

Courtesy: Deccan Herald

Bangalore, Aug 23, 2010 (DHNS): The High Court on Monday directed the special public prosecutor to formulate guidelines and prepare a list of circumstantial evidences to prove the case against the 11 men sentenced for bombing churches in the State during 2000.

Hearing a criminal appeal filed by 11 members of the banned outfit, Deendar Anjuman challenging the lower court order dated November 21, 2008 which had awarded death sentence for four men and life imprsonment for seven, the division bench comprising Justice K Sreedhar Rao and Justice B V Pinto directed special public prosecutor H N Nilgol to list the circumstantial evidence against the accused.

The 11 men are Syed Mohammed Ibrahim, Syed Hasan ul Zama, Abdul Rehman Sait and Amanat Hussain Mulla (death sentence), Sheik Hashim, Mohammed Farooq, Mohammed Siddique, Abdul Habib, Shamsuzzama, Sheikh Fardeen Vali and Syed Abdul Khader Jilani (life imprisonment). All of them have been sentenced for waging war against India by bombing three churches in the State including one in Jagajivan Ram Nagar.

The St Ann’s Catholic Church at Wadi, Gulbarga, St Jonh Luthern Church, Hubli and St Peter and Paul Church at Bangalore were bombed by the accused with an intention to create disharmony among the two communities and destabilising the Central Government.

The Bench shorlisted 10 principal circumstancial evidences to facilitate the prosecution’s task, and asked the latter to substantiate such evidences with documents.  The evidence include exchange of e-mails between accused, prosecution witness regarding conspiracy, seizure of incriminating evidence at the scene of blast, recovery of evidence at the house of accused, eyewitness statement regarding movement of the accused, statement of accused number one, possession of explosives by prime accused, recovering floppy and compact disc from the accused.

The prosecution has been directed to establish the legal implications of the case while submitting the evidence. "I have given you the skeleton and you have to add the blood to it. Make a technical analysis of the case, don’t drag it further, make a simple list regarding what you want to tell and make submission based on it, by placing relevant documents", the Bench told the prosecutor.

Police arrested the 11 men in connection with Church blasts in the State on July 9, 2000 and the CoD submitted a final report to the court on October 10 that year. They were sentenced after a long trial. The prosecution had examined 67 witnesses, filed 298 documents and 212 incriminating articles to the court to establish the case.