Samjhauta blast case hearing adjourned till March 18

Panchkula (Haryana): A special NIA court on Thursday adjourned the Samjhauta blast case. It will now come up for hearing on March 18.

Earlier in the day, Momin Malik, the counsel for Pakistani national Rahila Wakil, said that no guilty will be spared and no innocent will be punished in the case.

“As an Indian lawyer, I wish to assure that if I feel Aseemanand is not guilty, he won’t be punished. No guilty will be spared and no innocent will be punished. I have all the records. I just want everything to be crystal clear,” he said while speaking to media.

Giving details of the incident, he reminded that 10 of the 68 people who died in the blast were Indians. “Six of them were civilians while four were Railway personnel,” he said.

“There is no provision of the time limit in Section 311 of the CrPC, 1973. At every stage of the trial we can file prosecution,” he claimed.

On Monday, the NIA court had reserved the order in the case for March 14 after a Pakistani national filed an application on Monday stating that she wanted to place 'additional evidence' on record.

"An application was moved by a Pakistani national, Raheela Wakil, stating she wanted to produce her witnesses. Her father had died in the blast. But, we had issued a number of summons to the Pakistani nationals. They were intimated as well, but no one came to the court to give their responses," advocate SC Sharma had told reporters after the hearing on Monday.

Alleging that the Pakistani nationals were trying to derail the case, he said, "This motive of moving the application towards the fag end will be taken up in the next hearing. The application is likely to be dismissed. Court has asked that Pakistani national (Raheela Wakil) to file a written reply that why it should not be dismissed. A date after 14th March's hearing will be given for the verdict."

On February 18, 2007, an explosion had occurred in Samjhauta Express in Haryana's Panipat district, claiming the lives of around 68 people.

Out of the deceased, 33 male, 19 female, 10 male children and six were female children.

"Two unexploded bombs were also recovered from the site,” the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had said.

“This terrorist act was committed by using Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) along with the highly inflammable substances, which caused blasts and consequent fire in the compartments of the train no. 4001 UP Attari (Samjhauta) Express at Panipat, Haryana,” the charge sheet read.

“The Samjhauta Express (Attari) train blast case of 18.02.2007 was a "dreadful terrorist act" in which two powerful bomb blasts were carried out by a group of people in pursuance of a criminal conspiracy with an intent to kill people and further to threaten the unity, integrity, security and sovereignty of India and to strike terror in the people of India and in a foreign country,” the charge sheet said.

The charge sheet alleged that all the accused were agitated and perturbed over the attacks on Hindu temple sites and towns by the Islamic terrorist groups. In order to retaliate to such attacks, the accused persons conspired to target the Muslim population.

Accused Rajendra Chaudhary conspired, planned, executed the attack along with other suspects. They planted bombs in the Samjhauta Express train along with other co-accused persons on February 18.

The investigation clearly established that the blasts which took place in Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer Sharif were carried out by the accused persons in pursuance to a criminal conspiracy.

The NIA filed the first charge sheet before a special CBI court in Panchkula in 2011 and named five major accused namely Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Swami Aseemanand, Sunil Joshi alias Manoj Joshi alias Guruji, Ramchandra Kalsangra alias Ramji alias Vishnu Patel, Sandeep Dange alias Parmanand and Lokesh Sharma alias Kalu.

While in 2012, a supplementary charge sheet was filed against two people, namely Kamal Chauhan alias Badrinarayan alias Vijay, and Amit alias Ashok alias Prince.

In the following year, in another supplementary charge sheet, the premier investigators of terror crimes named another accused Rajendra Chaudhary alias Samunder alias Laxman Das Maharaj.