City suicide blast accused walk free
10 acquitted as no evidence was produced
The VII Additional Metropolitan Sessions Court on Thursday acquitted 10 persons in connection with the suicide bomb blast at Old Task Force Office in Begumpet in 2005.
The court gave the acquittal verdict citing the delay by the prosecution in submitting evidence. Judge T. Srinivasa Rao, who gave the verdict in the Dilsukhnagar bomb blast case in December 2016, sentencing five persons to death, pronounced the judgement in a packed court room in the Nampally Court Complex.
The court said that the prosecution has not only delayed producing the evidence, but has also failed to prove the charges levelled against the arrested.
Khairun-Unnisa Begum, the mother of Mohammed Khaleem, said that the family was literally thrown out of their rented house after Khaleem was arrested in connection with the blast.
The family found it difficult to get a house and finally managed to stay in a nephew’s residence in LB Nagar. Furthermore, Khaleem had married a month ago and after his arrest, his wife was forced to leave him.
The family of Mohammed Abdul Zahed also went through a similar ordeal. Though the court verdict made the families happy, they questioned the loss of time as their family members were forced to spend 12 years in the jail.
Khaleem, who was working as a welder, was 23 when he was arrested. He had married the girl with whom he was in love for more than a year. He had just started a new life. A few months after his arrest, his family sent his wife back to her parents’ house.
“Just one incident broke the whole family. We were immediately forced out of our rented house in Amberpet. We had to struggle to get a house for years. We were literally isolated even from our close family circles,” said KhairunUnnisa. She hoped that her son will be able to start a new life soon.
Meanwhile, Abdul Zahed’s family said that he was falsely implicated in the case without any evidence. His elder brother, Mohammed Abdul Khader, said that Zahed was not even married and lost a crucial period of his whole life.
“He lost half of his youth in the prison. He was frequently shifted to all the central prisons in the state,” Abdul Khader said.
Just one incident broke the whole family. We were immediately forced out of our rented house in Amberpet. — KHAIRUN-UNNISA
BEGUM