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Dubbed terror mastermind without any proof-Indranil Basu

At the age of 18, he had allegedly planted as many as 28 bombs in Delhi and NCR, that too single-handedly in all but one instance. Mohammad Amir Khan had, therefore, been implicated in 19 cases, charged with serious offences such as murder and waging war against the government. Yet, after spending 14 years in jail, he was released last month after being acquitted in all but two cases.

Though the courts have been acquitting him since 2001, the prosecution has so far not filed an appeal in any of them. Police officials told TOI they had no plans to appeal even against the last of the acquittals , tacitly admitting that they have no real evidence against Amir in any of those 17 cases. And yet they had no hesitation in projecting Amir as the mastermind of the serial blasts of 1996-97.

Amir and his counsel, human rights lawyer N D Pancholi, are optimistic about the appeals before the Delhi high court against the two convictions. A close reading of the judgments shows that the evidence cited against Amir in the two cases in which he has been convicted is as flawed as the 17 in which he has been acquitted, either by the trial court or the high court.

All the 19 cases are critically based on the testimonies of two witnesses, both of whom have completely contradicted the prosecution version. Chander Bhan, who was then a tea stall owner in Chandni Chowk, denied the police claim that he had accompanied them, along with Amir, to an alleged bomb factory in Pilakhua run by co-accused Mohammad Shakeel.

Worse, Bhan deposed in the court that he had never even seen either of the two accused.

Key witnesses contradicted cops on Amir

The other crucial witness cited by the police, Abdul Sattar, who is the owner of the factory premises, denied that he had ever seen Amir visiting Shakeel in Pilakhua. Much to the police's embarrassment, Sattar also denied that any explosive ingredients had been recovered in his presence from a textile printing unit run by Shakeel.

Thus, by "turning hostile" , Bhan and Sattar have left a gaping hole in the prosecution story on how the bombs had been sourced by Amir. As if that were not bad enough, the scores of other witnesses cited by the police for the blast sites did not help sustain the prosecution version.

While admitting their presence on the blast spot, most of the witnesses claimed to have not seen the person who had placed the bomb. As a corollary, they denied having seen Amir anywhere near any of the blast sites. Even the few who claimed to have seen the person planting the bomb either asserted that Amir was not the same person or their identification of Amir was found doubtful by the court.

Not surprisingly, the Delhi high court, while overturning his conviction in a Karol Bagh blast, observed that "the prosecution has miserably failed to adduce any evidence to connect the accused appellant with the charges framed, much less prove them." So, how did the police go so wrong in implicating Amir, after he had been touted as a breakthrough in the investigation of the serial blasts?

The investigators insist that regardless of the outcome of the court cases, they had caught the "right man." When contacted by TOI, they had no explanation for the mismatch between their version and the testimonies of their own witnesses. They take refuge in the fact that these low-intensity blasts relate to the six-year interregnum between two terror laws, TADA and POTA. The officers claim to have zeroed in on Amir on the basis of telephone intercepts, but there's no scope for them to use that as evidence under the ordinary criminal law. Similarly, his alleged disclosure to the police is also not admissible in evidence in the absence of a terror law.

As a result, the police could not bring up before the courts that Amir's disclosures had helped them bust other terror modules across the country. For the police, what is even more ironic is that Amir is off the hook even as six Pakistanis have been convicted in a 2001 case for plotting to secure his release by kidnapping VIPs such as cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Gangulyand former President A P J Abdul Kalam.

The judgments, however, point to loose ends left by the police in the multitude of cases they had brought against Amir. Here are some examples of shoddy investigation:
 
In a blast inside a bus near Amba Cinema in February 1997, a witness claimed to have seen Amir plant the bomb. However, not only was his statement recorded a year and a half after the incident , it was found that he gave no description of that person and identified the person as Amir only after he was shown Amir in custody.

In the same case, the witness also contradicted himself by saying that the person who had planted the bomb also alighted from the bus still holding the packet he believed to be the bomb. The court observed, "No reliance can be placed on the sole testimony of this witness."

While he was patrolling a Hindu procession on Qutab Road, a sub-inspector of police saw a suspicious packet being exchanged minutes prior to a bomb blast, but could not depose whether Amir was the same person though he "looked like him." The court said, "It is really strange that being a police officer , he does not try to apprehend the culprit. The testimony of this witness does not inspire any confidence."

After a bomb blast inside a bus in Burari claimed one person's life, witnesses claimed to have seen two boys in mid-twenties alight from bus minutes before the blast took place. The father of the deceased, appearing as a prosecution witness, claimed that though he had seen two boys occupy the seat under which the bomb had been placed and then alight the bus before the blast, he denied that accused Amir and Shakeel were the same boys and said that he had never seen them earlier.

Though an eyewitness to a blast in Rohtak claimed to have seen the bomber, the police failed to take follow-up action. As the court put it, "This witness was material witness and due to non-examination of this witness, the whole prosecution story becomes doubtful [... ] It is also pertinent to mention here that the complainant and other injured witnesses have not been examined by the prosecution despite numerous opportunities."