2 min readNew DelhiMar 11, 2014 03:28 AM IST
First published on: Mar 11, 2014 at 03:28 AM IST
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notices to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs and Delhi Police, directing them to submit, within a month, detailed reports regarding a man who was wrongly incarcerated for 14 years.
The case relates to Mohammad Amir, who was arrested on charges of terrorism in 1998 and released in January 2012. He was acquitted in 18 of the 20 terror cases for lack of evidence as the prosecution failed to produce a single witness in any of the cases connecting him to the blasts.
NHRC said Justice D Murugesan had issued notices to both the Union Home Ministry and the Delhi Police Commissioner, while seeking the entire record of the 12 separate cases that had been filed against him, along with the report. NHRC observed that according to media reports, Amir’s false implication in several cases amounts to a grave violation of his human rights.
NHRC noted that Amir was first arrested days after he turned 18 on February 27, 1998, from Old Delhi. For 14 years, he was imprisoned. “While Amir remained confined to a solitary high-security cell in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, he did not know that his father had passed away in penury and his mother got paralysis, suffered a brain haemorrhage and lost speech amid a social boycott,” an NHRC official said.
While speaking to Newsline, Amir said, “I am glad that this issue is being taken up. The kind of social ostracisation that my family and I faced, and continue to face can’t be expressed. It’s important that this issue is taken up, so that others aren’t similarly harassed.”
He said the Centre should try to rehabilitate those falsely accused of terrorism, after their release.
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