Hyderabad: A Special Investigation Team (SIT) and legal experts have analysed the order of acquittal pronounced in the task force suicide blast case and have decided to file an appeal in the High Court on the grounds of factual discrepancies.
Mr Avinash Mohanty, the head of the Central Crime Station and the SIT, said, “The investigating officers sent the seized material to the forensic laboratory after four days in one instance and after five days in another.”
The court in its judgement has stated that there had been an inordinate delay of over two weeks in sending the seized items to the lab.
The SIT has also decided to contend the fact that the panch witnesses produced in court were not convincing because they had previously acted as panchas in three other cases of the same SIT. Legal experts said that the panch witnesses are government officials who are, in rotation, assigned the task of assisting cops during the seizure of evidence, which is why there is a high likelihood of repetition.
The SIT has decided to quote the judgement pronounced in the Dilshuknagar bomb blast case where the court took the testimonies of similar panch witnesses into consideration. It has also decided to quote a Supreme Court judgement according to which there is no bar on the number of times government officials can act as panch witnesses. That judgement also says that panch witnesses who are government employees are more reliable.
The SIT shall plead the High Court to take into consideration the recorded evidence instead of the discrepancies in the oral statements of the Inspector and the Investigating Officer.
The court in its judgement said that the prosecution had failed to prove how the key accused Mohamed Abdul Kaleem had gotten hold of the ammonium nitrate explosive. It observed that the officials had not mentioned the seizure of a beaker containing ammonium nitrate in the seizure panchnama.
A source in the SIT said, “A4 has confessed that he got explosives from A1 Gulam Yazdani. The mere possession of explosives is an offence under the Explosive Substances Act. Even if it is not proved from where the explosives came, the accused may be convicted for possession of the explosives.”
The source said that regarding the beaker containing traces of ammonium nitrate, the investigating officer did not know what it contained at that time of seizure.
“He was only able to confirm it based on the forensic report. This shows that a genuine investigation was carried out. The defence has not cross examined the forensic experts, and this validates the forensic evidence,” the sources said.
The SIT also plans to ask the court to take into consideration the testimony of a Bidar based witness who has confirmed the presence of a bag containing explosives.
