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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Off death row, after loss of 16 years -Muzaffar Raina

Off death row, after loss of 16 years -Muzaffar Raina

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published Published on Nov 23, 2012   modified Modified on Nov 23, 2012
-The Telegraph

Srinagar: If appetite for capital punishment has been whetted in the country, Padshah Begum’s experience today should serve as a timely note of caution.

The 60-year-old lady in Srinagar received word this afternoon that Delhi High Court has taken her son off death row because “serious lapses” marked the police investigation into a blast in the capital in 1996.

She is no stranger to such news: two years ago, her eldest son was also acquitted in the same case. Her relief then did not last long as her third son was sentenced to death a few days later.

Aged 32, Mirza Nissar, the son on death row, has spent half his life — 16 years — in prison after he was arrested on the charge of playing a role in the Lajpat Nagar car blast in which 13 people were killed.

Today – a day after terrorist Ajmal Kasab’s hanging triggered a clamour for executing Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru — Delhi High Court acquitted Nissar and a fellow-accused and commuted the death sentence of another to life. The court upheld the life term for another accused from Kashmir.

“The police have not maintained minimum standards of probe, test identification parade was not conducted, statement of vital witnesses were not recorded. There was also absence of daily diary entry,” Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and G.P. Mittal said.

A Delhi trial court had in 2010 awarded the death sentences to Nissar and the others.

The acquittals by the higher court comes close on the heels of a damning report by the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Action, a civil rights group, that details how 16 Muslim youths were acquitted by the courts after the police had apparently picked them up at random and framed them in terrorism cases. The Telegraph had published the report on September 17.

At her home in Shamswari, part of Srinagar’s old city, Padshah Begum said this evening: “A lot of my relatives and neighbours are coming to our house but we don’t exchange greetings because of Muharram (a month of mourning for Shias). But his (Nissar’s) acquittal is something I will celebrate till my death.”

Padshah Begum regretted that the long incarceration had ruined the life and careers of her two sons. “My elder son Iftikhar languished in jail for 14 years and is almost jobless after he was released two years ago. My younger son has now been released after spending 16 years in jail. Who will pay for their lost years? We have been saying all along that they are innocent,” she said.

The family said Nissar was only16 when he was arrested from Nepal. His father’s untimely death some years earlier had forced him to discontinue studies after Class IX.

“He was in Delhi to help his brother in his handicrafts business and had gone to meet customers in Nepal when he was arrested. Iftikhar was by then already arrested in Delhi,” a relative said.

The family said they had a thriving Pashmina shawl business in Delhi but had to wind it up after the arrest of the siblings.

Second son Zaffar ran the family in the absence of Iftikhar and Nissar. But the private school teacher had a tough time making ends meet and getting his three sisters married.

The Telegraph, 23 November, 2012, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1121123/jsp/frontpage/story_16231170.jsp#.UK8RiGfNNP0


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