MUMBAI: Observing that the alleged offences against the accused relate to national security and that the impact on the nation and society is quite wide, a special court recently rejected the bail plea of terror convict and Indian Mujahideen operative Afzal Usmani, 15 years after he was arrested in a terror email case linked to the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts which killed 56. Usmani’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in the blasts case, in which he was convicted of conspiracy. In the Mumbai case where he was seeking bail, he is accused of stealing vehicles for the terror strike and sending terror emails before and after it.Usmani is accused of stealing four cars from Navi Mumbai in 2008, two of which were used in the Gujarat blasts. Usmani was first to be caught in the case in 2008. His arrest led to 18 others. Usmani was the first to spill beans about IM’s involvement. The blasts in Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008, and in Delhi on Sept 13, 2008 had left 82 dead and over 300 injured. In Surat, unexploded bombs were found. The emails, purportedly by IM owning responsibility for the blasts, were sent from Mumbai. According to ATS, the accused had hacked into WiFi networks of Khalsa College, Kamran Power Control in Chembur and US citizen Kenneth Heywood in Sanpada to send the terror emails.

The special judge, C S Baviskar, said the accused’s plea of innocence is not acceptable. “Many other accused in this case are alleged to have got training in Pakistan. According to the prosecution, they are trained in planting explosives and timer bombs. There is a huge recovery of arms and ammunition from the garment factory of one of the accused,” the judge said.The judge also said that grounds of long incarceration are not available to Usmani. “Certainly, the prosecution is not at fault, not being in a position to proceed with the trial of this case as the accused was being tried in Gujarat and was there and still is there for the conviction and has been undergoing the sentence,” the judge said. Usmani escaped from the Mumbai court in 2013 and was later arrested. In 2016, he was sentenced to five years for escaping.Refuting the defence that trying him in this case would amount to double jeopardy, the judge said, “If in one criminal conspiracy, many offences at different dates, times, and places are planned to be committed, hatching criminal conspiracy may be at once; however, for the commission of those different offences, committed at different dates, times, and places, certainly, the accused can be tried. By no stretch of the imagination, it can be said as double jeopardy,” the judge said.