CRPF camp terror attack: 17 years on, Allahabad HC sets aside death sentence for 4, acquits 5 of key charges

In 2019, the Sessions Court had sentenced Mohammad Shareef (47), Sabaduddin (46), and two Pakistani nationals and alleged LeT operatives Imran Shahzad (48) and Mohammad Farooq (47), to capital punishment in the attack in which eight persons were killed. It had sentenced the fifth accused, Jung Bahadur (58), to life imprisonment in the case.

The Sessions Court had acquitted two others, Gulab Khan (41) and Mohammad Kausar (48), in the case citing lack of sufficient evidence. The police had claimed to have recovered arms and ammunition from those arrested.

Setting aside the conviction based on the main charges, the High Court observed that the “case would have met a different result had the investigation and the prosecution been conducted by a more trained police”. It mainly cited gaps related to eyewitness accounts and the safekeeping of evidence while ordering the acquittal.

In its order, a division bench of Justices Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra and Siddhartha Varma stated: “If the appellants have already undergone the punishment of rigorous imprisonment of ten years then it shall be deemed that their punishment is complete. However, if they have not undergone the punishment of 10 years rigorous imprisonment then they shall complete the punishment…”

The HC ruled that the “period of imprisonment undergone by the appellants will be adjusted towards…sentence awarded to the appellants”.

When contacted by The Indian Express, Mohammed Shoaib, the lawyer who had represented the five men at the Sessions Court in Rampur court, said the five had “already spent 10 years in jail” but did not specify the nature of imprisonment.

The case relates to the incident on the night of December 31, 2007, when assailants fired indiscriminately at the CRPF camp killing seven jawans and a rickshaw-puller. Five others were injured.

The police subsequently arrested Shareef (Rampur), Jung Bahadur (Moradabad), Kausar (Pratapgarh), Khan (Bareilly) and Sabaduddin from Bihar, apart from Pakistani nationals Shahzad and Farooq. They claimed to have recovered AK-47 rifles, magazines, grenades and other items from them.

However, the HC stated: “The defect in investigation went to the root of the case and ultimately culminated in the acquittal of the accused persons. We are deeply concerned with the magnitude and enormity of the offence and at the same time we are constrained to observe that the prosecution miserably failed to prove the case against the accused for the principal offence beyond reasonable doubt which is a golden rule that runs through the web of criminal jurisprudence. The state would be at liberty to deal appropriately with the lapses in investigation and proceed against the guilty police officers under law.”

While stating that “definitely it could not be denied that the incident did take place”, the court said: “In the instant case, on account of the fact that the prosecution witnesses had never known the accused-appellants from before and were never made to identify the appellants in a TIP (Test Identification Parade), a doubt is raised as to whether the prosecution witnesses were ever aware that the accused-appellants had actually committed the offence.”

The HC ruled: “Still further, we find that from the side of the CRPF almost 98 rounds of firing had been done and from the side of the police also a fair amount of firing had been done but not one assailant was even injured, despite the fact that it was the case of the prosecution that they had entered inside the CRPF Camp to the extent that they had even left their fingerprints on some glass panes.”

In its order, the court said: “Also, we are of the view that when the case had to be solved by applying the principles of circumstantial evidence then also, the fingerprints which were allegedly lifted from the glass-panes of the CRPF Camp on 1.1.2008, ought to have been kept in extreme safe custody. Also, the empty cartridges, firearms, etc., which were recovered from the place of incident, ought to have been kept in the Malkhana of the police. From time to time, the State Government and the Central Government have been coming up with various rules and notifications as to how a Malkhana ought to be operated but in the instant case, we find that nowhere had those directions/ directives been followed by the police and the investigating agencies.”

In this context, the HC said that “after having gone through all the evidence on record and after having gone through the statements of the prosecution, we are of the view that the report of the FSL expert is not reliable”.

“When the fingerprints were lifted from the glass panes from the CRPF office on 1.1.2008, where exactly they were kept from 1.1.2008 to 3.4.2008 remained a mystery… When the safe keeping of the finger prints in between 1.1.2008 to 3.4.2008 was not proved by the prosecution then one cannot rule out the chance of tampering of the finger prints,” the court ruled.

“What is more, the bullets which were recovered from the CRPF camp by the CRPF personnel did not match the test bullets,” the ruling stated.

The HC concluded that ”offences under the IPC, UAPA, the Explosive Substances Act and the Arms Act were never proved” in the case.