Sabarmati Express blast: 17 years on, AMU scholar, coaccused acquitted
LUCKNOW/NEWDELHI: A Barabanki court on Saturday acquitted former Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) research scholar and suspected SIMI operative Gulzar Ahmed Wani and co-accused Abdul Mobin of terror charges in the Sabarmati Express blast case of 2000.
“The court of additional sessions judge (I) MA Khan acquitted Wani and Mobin of all the charges due to lack of evidence,” said advocate Prabhat Singh, Wani’s counsel. Passing the order, judge MA Khan observed that no evidence had been produced by the police before the court against Wani and Mobin. “Only on the basis of portraying them as SIMI members, the cops had made the two accused in the Sabarmati Express blast case,” the court said.A bomb blast occurred in Sabarmati Express in Barabanki on August 14, 2000, in which ten people died.
Mobin was arrested on September 3, 2000 from Aligarh Muslim University and Wani from New Delhi on July 30, 2001 and named accused in the case.
A resident of Pattan in Baramulla district of north Kashmir, Wani, has been in jail since then. Mobin was on bail since 2008 while Wani was lodged in Lucknow jail.
Wani, then 28, was pursuing his PhD in AMU’s Arabic department. He was also accused of being a conspirator in 10 other cases of explosions and slapped with 14 FIRs in different police stations of Delhi, Maharashtra and UP. But Wani was acquitted in all other cases before Saturday’s verdict.
On April 25 this year, the Supreme Court termed Wani’s custody spanning over 16 years without bail as “shame”.
“It is a matter of shame. He has been acquitted in 10 out of the 11 cases but still you want him to be in jail without bail,” a bench of chief justice JS Khehar and justice DY Chandrachud told counsel for UP government, who opposed Wani’s bail.
The apex court also fixed a date in November for his release even if trial was incomplete.