Citing prolonged incarceration, the Bombay High Court on Thursday granted bail to a man in jail for over 14 years in connection to the alleged terror email case, in which the trial is yet to start.
Mohammed Zakir Abdul Haque Shaikh was arrested in 2008 by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch. He was also booked in the Ahmedabad serial blasts case, in which he was acquitted last February.
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After Shaikh was cleared of all charges in the Ahmedabad case, he had approached the special court in Mumbai seeking bail, stating that he was not involved in the terror conspiracy and two co-accused in the case have been granted bail. He had said that he spent a long time in jail, far beyond the minimum punishment given on charges that he was booked for.
The detailed order by Justice A S Gadkari and Justice P D Naik is yet to be made available.
The special court had last August rejected Shaikh plea stating that his acquittal in the Ahmedabad case cannot be a ground for his release on bail in the Mumbai case. The court also said that his name appeared in the confessional statements of three co-accused – which were subsequently retracted – who claimed that he had taken training in Pakistan.
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Following the special court order, Shaikh’s lawyers Mihir Desai and Tahera Qureshi had approached the HC.
Shaikh (40) was in the scrap business when he was arrested. The police had claimed that news channels had received threat emails, purportedly from terrorist organisation Indian Mujahideen (IM), taking responsibility for the bomb blast in Ahmedabad in 2008. The investigation had revealed that the emails were sent by misusing the IP address of a college in Mumbai. The Mumbai Police also went on to arrest alleged members of IM. In all, 22 people arrested in the case.
Shaikh’s first bail plea was rejected in 2013 by the special court, so was his appeal in the HC in 2017. The Supreme Court had later upheld the HC order.
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