India News | Imagine if IEDs Made by ISIS Operatives Had Exploded, How Many Lives Would Been Lost, Says HC

New Delhi, Mar 24 (PTI) Just imagine what would have happened if IEDs would have exploded, how many lives would have been taken away, the Delhi High Court said on Thursday while hearing a plea challenging 10-year jail term awarded to a member of terror organisation ISIS for hatching a criminal conspiracy to carry out terror acts in the country.

A bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Rajnish Bhatnagar noted that the charges against convict Mohd Nafees Khan were serious.

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“It is not your case that you were making IEDs for fun. You admit that you were creating IEDs to create terror in India. Just imagine what would have happened if those IEDs would have exploded. How many lives would have been taken away. It does not impress us. There are serious charges against you. You are an adult and responsible for your acts,” the bench said.

A Delhi court, had on October 16, 2020, awarded varying jail terms to 13 persons for being the members of terror organisation ISIS and hatching a criminal conspiracy to establish its base in India by recruiting Muslim youths through different social media platforms to carry out acts of terrorism in the country.

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The high court was hearing an appeal by convict Nafees challenging the sentence of 10-year jail term awarded by the trial court and Rs 1.03 lakh fine imposed on him.

As the court was not inclined to grant the relief, advocates Prashant Prakash and Quasar Khan, representing Nafees, submitted they were limiting their prayer to reduction of sentence imposed on the convict.

The court allowed the prayer and reduced the fine amount to half.

When the prosecutor opposed the plea to reduce the amount, the bench said nobody suffered any actual damage since the probe agency caught him before any untoward incident could take place, so the fine could be reduced.

The court noted that Nafees had pleaded guilty to commission of offences under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC, and provisions of the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Explosive Substances Act.

It also noted that Nafees was semi literate and was working as a helper at a sanitary shop earlier and has no social ties with his family except that he used to occasionally visit them during festivals.

“We are of the considered view that the limited relief of reduction of fine imposed on Nafees merits interference, particularly in view of poor financial condition. Therefore, while upholding the order of sentence imposed on Nafees, we direct that the fine imposed be reduced to half,” the bench said.

While the trial court had awarded 10-year jail term to Nafees Ahmed Khan, three convicts got seven-year jail term each and one person was awarded six-year imprisonment.

It had also awarded five year jail term to eight other convicts.

Those awarded seven-year jail term were Abu Anas, Mufti Abdul Sami Qasmi and Mudabbir Mushtaq Sheikh, while Amjad Khan was sent to jail for six years.

The convicts who were awarded five-year jail term were- Obedullah Khan, Najmul Huda, Mohd Afzal, Suhail Ahamed, Mohd Aleem, Moinudeen Khan, Asif Ali and Syed Mujahid.

The court had awarded the jail terms after the convicts pleaded guilty.

While pleading guilty, the accused had told the court that they were “remorseful for the acts alleged against them”, and undertook not to indulge in similar acts and activities in future.

The case, registered by the NIA on December 9, 2015 under various sections of the IPC and the UAPA, pertains to the larger criminal conspiracy hatched by the ISIS to establish its base in India by recruiting Muslim youths for the proscribed terror group through different social media platforms, the NIA had said.

The accused had formed Junood-ul-Khilafa-Fil-Hind organisation, seeking to establish a caliphate in India and pledging allegiance to ISIS, to recruit Muslim youths to work for the ISIS and commit acts of terrorism in India at the behest of Syria-based Yusuf-Al-Hindi who is purportedly the media chief of ISIS, the NIA had said.

The NIA had filed charge sheets against the accused persons in 2016-2017.

This case was first of its kind in which terrorist conspiracy of this magnitude involving online radicalisation was effected on cyber space in the aftermath of declaration of Islamic Caliphate by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014, the NIA had said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)