To ensure that convicts of serial blasts in Mumbai’s local trains are not hanged to death and “to satisfy the collective conscience of the society” despite there being insufficient evidence against th
To ensure that convicts of serial blasts in Mumbai’s local trains are not hanged to death and “to satisfy the collective conscience of the society” despite there being insufficient evidence against them, relatives of the convicts launched a campaign to create public awareness about the case, on Sunday. The stress was put on how the convicts were implicated and incarcerated in the case.
“We have launched this campaign to create an awareness in the society on how innocent youths were falsely implicated in this case so that the society can demand a re-investigation into this case as well as their release from jail,” said Khalid Marghub Ansari convenor of the campaign whose brother Sajid Ansari has been awarded life sentence.
He also said, “We have a list of victims and we would approach relatives of each and every victim to provide them with all the details and documents of the case so that they can understand how the investigating agency has made a fool of the nation and how the culprits are still at large with innocent people are being punished instead.”
According to Khalid, people, including victims or their relatives only know that blasts had happened, people were arrested, tried in court and were convicted they are not aware about what evidence were put forth by the prosecution in the court and what defence was taken by the accused. “We would let them know how there is evidence to show that accused were on duty or at some remote place where ATS is claiming their presence at the time of blast and how accused and witnesses were tortured to give confession and false evidence that led to conviction,” Khalid said.
Commenting on the matter, former Mumbai high court judge B.G. Kolse Patil, who has supported the campaign, said, “We are not sure if the campaign would succeed but not doing anything and only sitting at home would definitely not help so it is better to make some efforts through a campaign.” He also said, “If there are two theories in one case then the accused could not be prosecuted under the criminal law but still these accused were convicted so I believe they would get justice in the higher court.”
Abdul Wahid Shaikh (acquitted accused of this case), Maharashtra MLC Kapil Patil, Abu Asim Azmi of Samajwadi party, Nizamuddin Raen of Congress, Professor Ram Punyani, advocate Nandita Haksar (author and human rights activist), advocate Mahrukh Edenwala and relatives of convicts were among the people who attended this programme and assured support for the campaign.
