Special NIA court in Jammu & Kashmir acquits five booked & jailed under UAPA

Srinagar: A special NIA court in Kashmir has acquitted five persons booked under UAPA and jailed in connection with a grenade blast outside Kashmir University in 2019.

Special NIA judge Manjeet Rai said: "The difficulty of the prosecution is not merely one of defective investigation, it is the total absence of legally admissible evidence connecting the accused with the occurrence."

The case pertains to a low intensity blast near Sir Syed gate of Kashmir University in November 2019, in which four civilians sustained injuries. The accused, who have been acquitted now are Naseer Ahmad Mir, Umer Hamid Sheikh, Ajaz Ahmad Sheikh, Imtiyaz Ahmad Chikla and Sahil Farooq Gojri - all residents of Srinagar.


They were booked under sections 307, 120 (B) of IPC, 3-4 of Explosive Substance Act and sections 16 and 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Police had claimed that the accused were in touch with a Jaish-e-Mohammed member, Burhan Bashir of Tral, who was killed in an operation in January 2020. They were represented by Mir Urfi Mir, MA Pandit and Associates, Waheed Ahmad Dar, Aqib Farooq and Zia ul Rehman.

"The court is conscious that the occurrence is a grave one...but the gravity of crime cannot dilute the standard of proof required to convict a person and the court of law cannot convict an accused on the strength of statements which the law expressly forbids it from receiving," read the order.

The court indicated that the circumstances concerned "must or should" and not "maybe" established. The court said there is not only a grammatical but a legal distinction between "may be proved and must be or should be proved." "When the prosecution evidence is examined dehors the lapses in investigation, what remains is the proof of an explosion and injuries and nothing more," read the order announced on October 22. "The submission that conspiracies are hatched in secrecy also does not relieve the prosecution of the burden of proving by admissible evidence, the circumstances from which the agreement is sought to be inferred."