A temple146;s trial

The Ayodhya incident briefly brought Akshardham back in public consciousness. In Ayodhya, the terrorists were buried immediately after the attack. In Akshardham however, the Gujarat police waited for more than a month to bury the two Pakistani militants8212;identified three days after the attack as Mohammad Amjad from Lahore and Hanif Yasir from Attock. A letter in Urdu identified the two as members of Tehrik-E-Kasas Movement for Revenge of Gujarat.

It was more than ten months after the incident that the Ahmedabad Crime Branch arrested five locals contacts, including Mufti Abdul Kayum Mansuri and Maulana Abdullah Miayn Sayyed, both clerics who ran relief camps for riot victims. Others were Salim Shaikh, Altaf Mallik Hussain and Suleman Aadam Ajmeri. All were held from the Muslim-dominated Dariyapur and Shahpur areas of the city.

Police allege that the conspiracy was hatched in Jeddah, where Salim and Aadam worked. According to the crime branch, the two, along with Aadam8217;s brother Rashid, provoked Muslims of Indian origin in Jeddah by showing them videos of post-Godhra riots. Helped by the ISI and LeT, they planned the attack, says the police.

Aadam, who drove an autorickshaw in Ahmedabad, was the local contact, while Rashid, a Jeddah-based businessman, funded the operation.

The Jammu and Kashmir police, meanwhile, claimed that they had arrested Chand Khan, the prime conspirator. They said Khan allegedly came to Ahmedabad, only a day before the attack, and claimed that no local resident was involved in the attack. Khan8217;s main role was to get the weapons to the city. The contradiction notwithstanding, all the six were booked under POTA.

LAST month, the central POTA committee endorsed the use of POTA for all six accused. According to H.M. Dhruv, special public prosecutor, 8216;8216;The central POTA committee has vindicated the prosecution8217;s stand by upholding applicability of POTA.8217;8217;

Defence lawyer M.I. Lalwala says, 8216;8216;The delay was caused by the review. We hope the trial resumes soon.8217;8217;

The chargesheet in the case was filed in August 2003 and the court has also framed charges against 34 people, including 28 absconding persons8212;they are believed to be in Jeddah, Hyderabad and Pakistan. The list of absconders include dreaded terrorist Abu Hamza and Mufti Sufiyaan who is also an absconding accused in four other POTA cases registered in the state.

8216;8216;We have already filed a chargesheet against the six accused while there is little we can do about the absconders as most of them are in foreign countries,8217;8217; says D.G. Vanzara, additional commissioner crime.

The trial will resume at the designated POTA court in Ahmedabad on July 14. More than 40 witnesses were examined during the first phase of the trial and from July 14 recording of evidence will resume.

FOR the victims and their families, the wait for justice has been long. 8216;8216;It8217;s been almost three years now and we are hoping that the accused would soon be punished,8217;8217; says Rakesh Haathi, who lost his parents and his nephew in the attack. Gurjeet Kaur, who lost her husband and uncle in the attack while her then two-month-old was also injured, says she hopes to see the culprits punished.

8216;8216;That visit to the holy place changed the lives of many. We are yet to come to terms with life and cope with the loss of our loved ones. I hope the culprits are punished severely,8217;8217; she says.