Five years after he was arrested in Anti-terror law case, Mohammed Habeeb has been pronouned as “innocent” by a court in Bangalore Karnataka. A Special Judge of an NIA court Kasanappa Naik on 14 June acquitted the 36-year-old auto driver.
“Keeping in mind the requirements of provision of Section 227 of Cr PC, and also the law laid down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the aforesaid decisions, and so also, on careful perusal of entire materials on record, I am of the considered opinion that there is no sufficient ground to proceed against accused No.7 for the offences alleged against him and, therefore, the accused No.7 is liable to be discharged,” said the court in its order while acquitting Habib.
Habeeb, who is a resident of Jogendra Nagar in Agartala Tripura, was behind bars in connection with the cases related to 2005 shooting at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in which one person was killed and several injured.
According to media reports, the Karnataka Police have arrested him by terming him ‘conspirator of the terror attack’.
The police claimed in the court that Habeeb allegedly helped the main accused of the shooting “to commit terrorist activities in Bengaluru in the name of Jihad” and helped an accused to cross the Bangladesh border illegally.
However, the court found that “no evidence to corroborate the statement of accused No.7 is produced in this case.
Habeeb was released from jail on Friday and left for home in Tripura the same day. His release was made possible thanks to the efforts of the Arshad Madani group of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind.
“I never came to Bangalore. I saw the city for the first time when police brought me there after arrest. I had no knowledge of shooting at IISC in Bangalore and neither I knew or met any accused ever. After my arrest, my father could not tolerate the pain of his son’s arrest and died,”