SC stays Aftab Ansari’s death sentence

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has stayed the death sentence awarded to gangster-terrorist Aftab Ahmed Ansari in the Kolkata American Centre attack case.

A vacation bench comprising Justice G S Singhvi and Justice C K Prasad sought response of the West Bengal government on the petition of Ansari challenging his conviction and capital punishment in the case. The court asked the state to file the reply within four months. Six policemen were killed and 14 injured in 2002.

Earlier this month, the apex court had stayed the death sentence awarded to Ansari’s aide Jamiluddin Nasir for his involvement in the attack on the American Centre.

Two motorcycle-borne men had indiscriminately fired with a AK-47 assault rifle at policemen outside the American Centre on Jawaharlal Nehru Road in Kolkata early on the morning of January 22, 2002.
A division bench of the Calcutta high court in February 2010 had confirmed the death sentence of Ansari along with co-accused Jamiluddin Nasir for such attack.

However, the high court had commuted the capital punishment awarded to three others to seven years of rigorous imprisonment in the case.

The sessions court in April 2005 had sentenced Ansari, Nasir and three others to death while acquitting two others in the case.

They were charged with Section 121 ( waging , or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against the Government of India ), Section 121A (Conspiracy to commit offences punishable by section 121), section 300 (Murder), Section 302 (punishment for murder and Section 307 (attempt to murder) of the FIGHTING TERROR Indian Penal Code.
The prosecution had also slapped Section 27 (3) of the Arms Act against them. The prosecution had examined 126 persons in the case to bring charges against Ansari and others.

Four days after the attack, two persons — Salim and Zahid — were injured in an encounter with a Delhi police team in Hazaribagh in Jharkhand and they subsequently died. The police had come to know about the involvement of Ansari in the American Centre attack from their dying declarations.

Ansari was arrested from Dubai and was deported to India on February 9, 2002, to face trial in the case. He was part of terror outfit Asif Reza Commando Force that had links with Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islam .
Ansari used to run extortion and abduction rings in India and had set up bases in Kolkata, Agra, Mumbai, Malegaon and Surat.