A sessions court on Wednesday acquitted three men charged with looting a bank and using a part of the loot to fund the December 1999 hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC-814. The court acquitted Abdul Latif,Bhopalman Yusuf Khan and Mushtaq Ahmed who had been arrested for looting Rs 7 lakh from the Maharashtra State Co-operative Bank in suburban Borivali on October 6,1999. In 2008,Latif and Khan were sentenced to life imprisonment for their role in the hijack by a CBI court in New Delhi and will hence stay in jail. But Ahmed will walk free based on the acquittal as he was not charged in the CBIs investigation. The court pointed out that it took over a year for the prosecution to seek sanction from the Collector as required under the Arms Act. The charges under the Indian Explosive Substances Act,1908,also could not be proved as a key panch witness failed to identify the location from where AK-56 rifles,hand grenades and rocket launchers were recovered. Other charges of robbery and criminal conspiracy too did not stick as the prosecution fumbled on gathering a strong line-up of witnesses who could confirm that the three did indeed enter the bank and rob it. During the trial,a key witness failed to identify the three men. The bank employees too could not identify the three men. The court said that if there is no witness the charges of conspiracy would fall too. Apart from the bank officials and customers,the 13 witnesses examined in the court included the then Senior Inspector of Borivali police station Prafful Joshi and investigating officer Arjun Bagdi, said Latifs lawyer Abdul Wahab. Judge Vishnu Sahay cited a Bombay High Court judgment which said if it is difficult to decide who out of the two witnesses was lying,both can be discarded and thus the case was dismissed and accused acquitted, he added.
